Risen
by Thunderwolfe
Summary: A newly risen Forsaken must learn to balance acceptance of what he has become with the values and ideals of his old life.  Set against the backdrop of the Horde's raid on Shadowfang Keep and the downfall of Archmage Arugal.
1. Prologue, Part 1

_Prologue_

Part One

**Silverlaine Keep**

Arugal tensed.

The resident archmage of Silverlaine Keep did not like arguing, much less with his wife. Engaging in petty disagreements was beneath him. He had always believed that the truth of almost any situation was self evident, if the observer had the necessary wit and perception. Therefore, to disagree over trivialities implied a distinct lack of intellect on the part of one of the parties involved. Arugal's wife, Jenna, was usually a quiet, obedient, and thoughtful woman. He almost never had any disputes with her.

Her sister, on the other hand...

"Annika says that the Council refused to bring them here because they were uncontrollable," Jenna said, subconsciously crossing her arms over her pregnant belly. Her body language was tense and apprehensive, the look on her face no different. It was one she shared with most of the keep's inhabitants. "Annika thinks that-"

"Annika be damned!" Arugal struck back, finally losing his temper. He took a deep breath, invoking a quick mental exercise to calm himself. Casting spells in the midst of battle and stressful discussions between man and wife had one thing in common – loosing one's temper was never beneficial. "I'm sorry, my dear. I know that you rely on Annika's advice heavily, but this is not the same as planning for the baby. Annika's husband may have dabbled in sorcery, but that does not make her an expert on the subject of-"

"Nor are you, brother dear," interjected a voice, "if you think the Worgen are tame puppies that will bite only whom you tell them to."

Arugal did not need to turn around to know who stood in the doorway. He found it difficult to reconcile how one sister could be so calm, humble, and yet charming, while the other sister had all the charm and arrogance of a rooster and the voice to match. The fact that Annika's husband had studied in Dalaran seemed to give her license, in her own mind, to comment authoritatively on all matter of issues she knew absolutely nothing about. Jenna had a bad habit of listening to her, which made it all the worse.

Arugal loathed her.

"You've escaped the kitchens, I see," Arugal commented, allowing an edge of scorn into his voice, "Are there no more dirty dishes?"

"I was speaking with the scullery girls, trying to reassure them, as you well know. The whole keep is on the verge of panic, after we heard about Elemere."

Arugal turned to her, arms crossed over his chest, with as much civility as he could muster. As much as the two sisters differed in temperament, they had in common in appearance. Jenna's hair was cropped short – it kept her cool during her pregnant summer – while her sister's was long and wild; the rich auburn color, however, was identical. Their tall, slender figures (Jenna's, of course, now sporting a belly), high cheekbones, and dazzling green eyes were gifts from their mother, given to each child in equal measure. There were some in the keep who fancied Annika for her fiery temperament and outspoken opinions that rivaled her pretty face. Arugal loved Jenna for just the opposite reason.

Arugal sincerely hoped that his baby's temperament would take after it's mother and not it's aunt or cousin. Annika's young child Callie trailed along after her everywhere, played with every filthy urchin in the keep and the village below, and had a precocious mouth to match her mother. The girl was standing now at her mother's side, arms wrapped around her leg, staring wide-eyed (and, for once, quiet-mouthed) at Arugal.

Annika and her little whelp came to Silverlaine Keep two months ago, intending to help Jenna with the baby. They had been in Dalaran mere weeks before the undead Scourge attacked it, but somehow managed to depart with time to spare. Arugal wished she'd waited a month. Annika's husband, a man Arugal had never met but endured hearing about almost daily, sent her to Dalaran from Lordaeron for safety's sake, once rumors of the Scourge began to circulate. Arugal still laughed at the irony, considering that Dalaran was now little more than a smoking ruin.

"Elemere is not your concern," he said. "Perhaps the little folk of the keep would not have such prejudice against the Worgen if you hadn't circulated half-truths and suspicions among them."

"Elemere is all of our concern!" Annika snapped back. "They went into the mine and slaughtered everyone in it. People worry they'll do the same to us."

"If everyone was slaughtered," Arugal commented dryly, "then how have you heard of it? Did your learned husband teach you to commune with ghosts?"

Annika put her hands on her hips and scowled, but she had no retort. _Another point_, thought Arugal, although congratulating himself on out-debating one such as her was akin to priding oneself on being able to win an arm-wrestling match against a toddler.

Jenna leaned up against Arugal, and gently grasped his folded arm. "Please don't argue," she entreated them both, "it upsets the baby." She paused a moment, then looked up to Arugal. He saw Annika's look in those eyes, and it irked him. "Husband," she implored, "she's just trying to tell you that people are scared. Everyone says that the Worgen are killing humans along with undead. What will we do if they come back here?"

"A group of undead had attacked the miners," Arugal said, "The Worgen intervened. They were doing their duty, as they were commanded to do."

"Furthermore, the survivors of the attack," Arugal added, casting an acidic glare at Annika, "who I personally interviewed when they made it back, told me that the miners attacked the Worgen unprovoked. Undoubtedly they were not able to tell friend from foe." This was not strictly what the two men had said when they reached the keep, but they were severely injured and feverish from infected wounds. Arugal highly doubted that their memories of the event were accurate.

Annika opened her mouth in rebuttal, but Arugal simply raised his voice to deliver a final comment. "If those cowardly Kirin Tor had agreed to summon the Worgen when I told them to, then Silverpine would have been cleansed of the Scourge already, and those men wouldn't have been holed up in the Elem mine in the first place." At Arugal's vehement tone, Annika's daughter retreated fully behind her mother's dress.

"And then what?" retorted Annika. "When the Scourge-"

Any further rebuttal was drowned out by the loud droning of the keep's Balehorn – a gift given a former Baron long ago by the Wildhammer clan of dwarves. Its sound was anything but pleasant; the soldiers of the keep joked that it would not only wake the dead, but make them cover their ears as well. Thus, it was an effective call to arms.

Jenna's eyes widened. "It's them, isn't it? They're back. You have to keep them out, please. I -"

Arugal put a finger to her lips. "Go with your sister to her apartments," he said, "Wait there. I'll take care of it, don't worry."

Annika's arms went protectively around her sister, and she began to lead them away, even as the courtyard quickly started to fill with soldiers scurrying to their posts like so many ants. She couldn't resist a parting shot, however, and flashed Arugal a scathing glare over her shoulder.

"Don't you dare let them in here," she said. "Don't you dare."


	2. Prologue, Part 2

_Prologue_

Part two

**Brill**

Outside, the wind howled.

It created waves of syncopation in the otherwise constant drumming of rain on the roof of the old inn. Somewhere, a window shutter swung back and forth on rusty hinges. It banged out of tune to the rain, creating more cacophony than rhythm. Periodic flashes of light heralded the peals of thunder that momentarily drowned out all sound.

Inside, however, all was quiet.

Katrina could not help but smile at the irony. She had grown up by the hearth, listening with rapt attention to her grandfather spinning tales of heroes and villains, of the savagery of the orcish hordes and the nobility of paladins. How many times had a dire tale begun with "It was a dark and stormy night..."? It seemed particularly appropriate on this night, the night of her death.

She was alone in the inn but for the quiet pacing and hand-wringing of Mrs. Winters, and the dozen or so dying men and women who were loved well enough that they were brought into the warmth and light, rather than left to expire out in the cold. Not that it mattered much.

It did not have to be this way. Dr. Victor had urged Katrina to come with the last of the able-bodied, as they fled their home and sought the safety of the city. They had been fighting a losing battle with the plague for two weeks now, only then to be told that a virtual army of the undead had been seen to the south, led by necromancers and the Light only knew what else.

"There's nothing more to be done here," he had told her, "We must flee. We cannot save the sick, but we can still help save Lordaeron."

Katrina would have gone with them. Should have gone with them.

Her parents were already dead. She had helped bury them, her tears mixing with the earth as they were lowered down. It was more than a week ago now. Her brothers had been among the first that had gone to the city for help; she had not seen them since. Her friend Neela, who had hardly slept or eaten for the tireless care she had given the sick, had finally succumbed. She did not get the dignity of a bed or even a pallet - she was crumpled on the floor by the entrance to the inn, right where Dr. Victor had left her.

None of these people, however, compelled her to stay. Instead, the reason Katrina remained in Brill lay on a makeshift bed by the fire, breathing his last.

Like Neela, Sorin Trollbane had hardly slept an hour since the plague struck Brill. Like Neela, he had a strong constitution and unwavering will to remain and tend to those who had fallen ill. And, like Neela, he'd only started coughing this morning.

Katrina sat cross-legged on an old bear rug with Sorin's head in her lap. His eyes were closed, his breath coming and going slowly yet still steadily. His face had gone deathly pale, his lips almost devoid of all color. He had not opened his eyes in some time, and the last time he had, she saw neither focus nor recognition in them. His body lay limp, his normally muscular arms clammy and dotted with goosebumps. The left leg of his trousers had been cut back to the thigh to reveal an angry red slash, oozing blackish-gray pus. His leg below the knee was so swollen and bloated it looked like the leg of a dead man pulled out of the water after a week floating at sea.

He received the cut only the day before, trying to protect a woman who'd already been infected as she lay dying in the mud. She'd been attacked by two undead corpses - people of Brill  
who had died of the plague and had been buried. But they never stayed in the ground for long. That was what the Plague of Undeath did to its victims. That's what it did to the people she had grown up with, forcing them to bury their loved ones, only then to kill and burn the corpses when they clawed their way out of the ground.

Only a few hours ago, Katrina had wanted to go with Dr. Victor. That was when Sorin showed her the leg. He'd been limping for several hours, but he told her that it was just an innocent scratch. "I won't be allowed past the barricades," he argued between powerful coughing fits, "I'm clearly infected. Besides, Neela needs my care. She is growing very weak."

He became very upset when she told the doctor to leave without her, but he was past the point of pushing her out the door. He was barely able to stand for more than a few minutes at a time. So the last of Brill's uninfected, with halfhearted promises to return with a "cure", spoke their hasty goodbyes and departed.

Katrina could hardly remember a time that she did not love Sorin. It was unrequited love, of course. Sorin had never so much as kissed her on the forehead. Katrina was only 17 years old, and part of her knew that her adoration was little more than a girlish crush. He was married, and had a little daughter. He was twice her age, and far more worldly, having spent much of his youth studying magic in Dalaran.

He'd come to Brill from Dalaran, the "City of Wizards", almost five years ago, pregnant wife by his side. His arrival provided ample gossip for the more idle townsfolk, and soon rumor spread that he had been kicked out of the school of magic there.

The Trollbanes were a powerful and wealthy family, widespread in positions of honor and influence across Lordaeron, tracing their roots back to the old Arathi nobility. Sorin's father, a distinguished Dalaran wizard, was said to have cast Sorin out of the family for the disgrace he brought upon them. There were as many theories about the exact nature of Sorin's crimes as there were housewives with loose tongues.

None of the theories speculated that Sorin did not have some magical ability, however.

As Katrina slowly brushed the damp hair away from Sorin's clammy brow, she remembered the first time they met. Katrina's parents had been tailors, and her father's particular specialty had been dresses (a fact not lost upon the boys of Brill when it came time to tease Katrina's brothers). Fortune smiled upon Katrina's family several years previously when Bowen's gowns caught the eye of Lordaeron's more influential noblewomen. Business boomed. They set up a store in the city, and were able to buy a house with land away from town.

By that time, word had begun to spread of Sorin's skills as a carpenter, as well as the flower and herb garden at his house that would have made elves envious. Bowen paid a visit, and was so impressed that he asked Sorin to build him an arbor. Sorin, who had spread word that he would happily do whatever odd jobs were required around town, readily agreed.

Given the rumors and speculation, mixed with a healthy dose of her own imagination, she expected him to appear dressed in some kind of runic spellbinder's robe, carrying a magic staff or at the least an intelligent wise-cracking sword. Instead, he wore a simple vest and trousers - attire that would never be tolerated in the Dalaran of her mind's eye. A wizard - even a wizard's apprentice - would be pale and slender, preferring libraries to gardens. Sorin was just the opposite, tan - somewhat weather-beaten even - with an erect posture and strong arms. She wondered if he was actually only a stable-hand for some wizard's favorite horses.

Sorin's demeanor was all serene competence. His muscled arms and large hands were calm and quiet, even as they moved about their tasks with practiced ease. He carried only a few tools, and neither nails nor hammer. Unlike the carpenters and builders in Brill, there was no noise, no pounding, no gathering piles of sawdust. Instead of nailing together the beams of wood, he _bent _them, slowly and gently, weaving them like straw back and forth. It seemed impossible that such thick pieces of lumber, as large as the posts in her new house, could be bent even a little, let alone at such precise angles that he achieved. At first, the trellises and arbors that he constructed looked oddly twisted. As the hours and days passed, however, grace and symmetry, seemingly more in harmony with nature than with man, appeared.

Just when Katrina found herself waiting by the corner of the house each morning scanning the road for the first glimpse of him, the project was finished. On the last day, her parents invited Sorin inside for lemonade and pumpkin pie, which he graciously accepted. Katrina rushed to grab a small vase that contained white and yellow roses that she had picked several days prior. She was disheartened to see that most of the cuttings had wilted, while a couple of them remained unopened buds.

"Sorry," she mumbled awkwardly, as she nonetheless set the vase down on the table, "they were prettier before..."

Without a word, Sorin reached out and took one of the unopened cuttings in one hand. Suddenly, it sprang to life, opening fully in seconds, crying out in all its vibrant golden glory. Katrina jumped, and her mother let out a gasp of surprise behind one hand. Sorin, grinning, handed the rose to Katrina.

She was infatuated.

From that day forth, Katrina did everything she could to put herself in Sorin's path, if only just to smile awkwardly and wave. The boys caught on quickly, and the tale of her crush circulated as rumors are apt to do in small towns. The adults, for their part, thought that it was cute, and confided to her that there was more than one grown woman in Brill who felt the same.

Alas, Sorin himself was every bit as attentive and kind to all the folk of Brill as he was to her. She longed to be singled out by him, to be noticed above the others, considered special. As the years passed and she grew from child to young woman, her frustration only mounted. She took every excuse to come by his home and visit, only to be treated to an unwelcome display of just how much he doted on his wife and baby daughter.

Eventually, her parents and other folk of the town began to disapprove, staying it wasn't appropriate for a young woman to be so infatuated with a married man. Her mother warned that rumors of a different sort were bound to start soon, given that Katrina was certainly one of the prettier young ladies in Brill. Even Mrs. Winters, who was always like an aunt to Katrina, remarked on it. She and her husband Abe always fancied that Katrina would fall for their son Jonathan, but Katrina would have none of it. Next to Sorin, Jonathan was just such a _boy_.

When the rumors of the plague started, before Brill was struck, Sorin sent his wife and child away for their own safety. Katrina enjoyed a brief glimmer of hope, and spent as much time as she could around him. Sorin, however, had a remarkable ability to focus on the task at hand – in this case, helping prepare the defenses of the town – to the exclusion of nearly everything else. It was a trait she admired and hated in him at the same time.

In the end, he treated her the same as everyone else, and she was silently miserable.

Now, sitting alone in the inn with Sorin, Katrina stared into the firelight, smiling ruefully at the irony of the situation.

Sorin let out a weak cough, the first he'd done in an hour. His breathing was more ragged now, full of starts and stops. For just a moment, his breathing ceased altogether, and she started in alarm. She knew Sorin did not have much time left. She needed to act now.

All day, she'd focused on helping those who were dying. Even as Sorin's condition grew worse and worse, and a plan formed in her mind, she refused to dwell on it. She had seen over and over what happened when those she loved died of the plague.

Mrs. Winters was mumbling to herself, wringing her hands, and worrying over her husband, who lay over near the door to the kitchens. He hadn't breathed for several hours. Katrina left her to be alone with her grief.

With Sorin's head still in her lap, she reached behind her, pulling out the object she had carefully placed there. It was a long, clean knife from the inn's kitchen. It was strong and sharp, but too short to offer much protection against the undead. Fighting the undead, however, was not what she had in mind.

Two weeks ago, she would never have had the resolve to do what she did now.

She leaned forward, letting her dark hair fall all around, and brought her lips down to Sorin's. His were cold and unmoving – not quite what she imagined for a first kiss, but it didn't matter. It was a kiss for another time, some distant past or future life, when all this would be nothing more than a bad dream.

Gently, she felt the muscles of his left chest, deflated and corpse-like, and put the tip of a finger above his heart, between the ribs. Her right hand brought the knife blade to rest next to her finger. For a moment, she watched the reflected firelight play on the blade's edge as his chest rose and fell haltingly. Then she thrust the knife in.

The blade met almost no resistance, and Sorin's body jerked just a little. Then she forcefully twisted the knife and ripped it out again. She passively watched the blood erupt from the wound, satisfied that it was still a bright red color. A human color. She felt neither regret nor revulsion, but a profound sense of satisfaction.

Outside, the rain had stopped. Katrina hadn't noticed. There was a sudden baying noise, too shrill to be a dog. It jolted her into action. She rose up from the blood-soaked rug, still holding the knife, and joined Mrs. Winters at the window, cupping her hands over her eyes to see better.

A flash of lightning in the distance lit up the sky, and briefly illuminated a crowd of gangling figures that were moving quickly across the puddles of rainwater in the road, toward the light coming from the windows of the inn. Even when the lightning faded, and the distant thunder answered, she could still see a number of eerie points of light coming from further down the road, some white, some blue, and some like fire.

"They're coming," said Mrs. Winters. She turned back toward her husband. "I should wake Abe. We can't stay here..." If the old woman noticed the blood literally dripping from Katrina's hands, she gave no indication.

"Yes, dear," Katrina said in a detached voice. She cupped one hand over Mrs. Winters' forehead and pulled her back against her breast. With the other, she drew the knife across the woman's throat. It was easy; Mrs. Winters hadn't eaten much over the last couple weeks, she was weak and frail. She hardly struggled. Katrina made no apology or eulogy, but gently lowered the old woman down next to Sorin.

Then Katrina heard them - a rumbling of guttural noises never meant for human ears. They were close. She lay supine on the other side of Sorin, even as the door to the inn was being torn away from its hinges. Turning her head, she took in his face one last time, cheery fire frolicking in the background, as the tip of her knife paused just a moment above her breast.

With a single jerk of her arm, she felt cold, and warmth, and most of all, relief.


	3. Chapter 1

_Chapter One_

**Risen**

I awoke. The dream ended. The nightmare began.

Consciousness crept upon me stealthily as the swirl of memories began to recede like fog fleeing from the morning breeze. There had been a woman that I loved and a child whose eyes were like mine. A dog, a house, friends I knew from a happier time. There were darker things too, however - corpses scattered across the ground, as if tossed there carelessly by the hand of a bitter god. The stench of rotting flesh and ash in the air, dark blood dripping from my hands...

I opened my eyes. Evermore, my life would be divided into _before_ and _after_.

The transition was jarring. I shut my eyes again, hoping to find my way back to the beloved dream people whose names I couldn't remember. There were echoes of laughter and singing in some corner of my mind, but they were interrupted by ominous rumbles of thunder, and then silence overcame them both, leaving me alone, awake, and very lost.

I stood in a dusky forest, quite unfamiliar. There was a pervasive sense of unnatural, eerie silence. There was no breeze through the boughs of the trees; what leaves remained were quiet. It would have been an autumn scene, with large mats of rotting foliage carpeting the ground, but there was no hint of red or gold to them. The air was cool, but heavy and humid. A faint mist hung in the air - the sort that can only be sensed when looking off far into the distance. The trees, although half-barren, were closely packed together, and shadows filled the spaces between. Overhead, a dark green haze blotted out the sunlight almost entirely. What feeble rays of light that managed to reach the forest floor did very little to alleviate the gloom.

Awareness was slow in coming. My mind felt numb, trapped in the same haze that saturated the landscape. I was acutely aware that there was a great wrongness about many things, but I wrestled with the specifics. The small details came first, while the larger problem itself stayed out of focus.

Where were the animals, the birds? The soft cacophony of sounds that twittered in the background of the world's forests had been replaced here by oppressive stillness. I saw rotting logs, but the piles of wood splinters and dust that marked the handiwork of beetles had been replaced by a omnipresent green fungus on the bark.

As I glanced around myself, my gaze came to rest on a peculiar wooden shaft. The pole was smooth, worn down by hundreds of hands that had grasped it over the years. It looked like the shaft of a spear or pole-arm. It was very close to me, I reached out my hands and touched the surface. The wood was smooth, or rather, I was unable to feel the texture. I frowned, certain that this was not as is should be.

I raised my hands to my face, scrutinizing the tips of the fingers. Again, I was struck by a sense of wrongness, but I couldn't tell what it was that was so wrong. As I rubbed the fingertips together, I could feel the pressure, but the sensation was blunted. Didn't I used to have a delicate sense of touch? Suddenly I couldn't remember.

Again I looked at the pole, frowning further. It was suspended in the air in front of me, horizontally, several feet off the ground. How curious. Slowly I ran my fingers along the near end, and then stopped. The shaft pierced my abdomen, just above the umbilicus. There was no wound, no blood, as if the skin had healed itself over the shaft. Intrigued, I turned to look behind me, only to discover that all this time I had been with my back against a tree - pinned to it by a spear.

I distinctly remember a tiny voice in the back of my mind shouting at me that this was all wrong, that I should run, or fall down, or cry for help, or _something_. It's hard to remember why I didn't do any of these things. Instead I focused on the point where I had been pierced, trying to work out why there wasn't any blood. There should have been blood, I was certain of it.

Eventually I came to the task of getting unstuck, which was harder than it seemed at first. After several attempts, I bent forward over the shaft and grasped it with both hands, while lifting up both feet and bracing them against the tree. The shaft of the spear, running through my midsection, was supporting me entirely. Rather than slide myself off, I gripped the spear tightly and used the leverage of my legs to pull the spearhead out of the tree itself. I crashed to the ground like some undignified apprentice witch on her first broom-riding attempt.

With a self-satisfied smirk, I easily pulled the spear out of my midsection. The spear-blade was wide and long, in the tradition of the old Arathi Longspear infantry, and it had the stamp of Lordaeron on it. It was old, but still solid and sharp, and it brought a smile to my face. If nothing else, my king knew how to make a good spear.

Blood leaked from the open hole in my abdomen. It dripped on the ragged trousers I wore. This pleased me. The blood was darker than I expected - almost black, and it was more of a trickle than a gush, but at least I was bleeding. I was supposed to be bleeding with a wound like that. I gripped the spear easily in my hand, confident now that somehow things would start making sense.

* * *

I walked for hours, spear in hand, through the grim forest. A certain familiarity with the woods gnawed at the back of my mind, but since I couldn't recognize any specifics at all, I simply picked a direction and set out.

It became apparent that there had been a scattered skirmish in the area, long ago. I came across a number of corpses of men, greatly decayed, and overgrown with the ubiquitous green moss that seemed to cover almost everything in the forest. Many of the bodies had been mutilated or burned, and in some cases, both.

After a few hours of walking, I came up on a narrow track in the wood. It wasn't wide enough to be called a road - it was likely most traveled by local farmers and peasants going from one farmstead or village to another. Not long after I started to walk along the track, which was overgrown and underused, I rounded a bend in the track and stopped suddenly.

Lying across the track, not twenty feet in front of me, lay an old corpse of what was likely once a horse. There was little left of its flesh; it was mostly a heap of bones with some tufts of fur and skin, grown around by moss and grass, with the remnants of a saddle in the middle. Bent over it, pulling at the bones - more like digging, was the figure of a man.

Without hesitation I opened my mouth to greet whomever it was, but words did not come out. I wasn't sure if it was some dysfunction of my voice, or the look of the figure's face as he suddenly whirled around. If the thing was human once, it certainly wasn't now. Desiccated flesh hung loosely from its gaunt skull, its nose and part of the jaw having been shorn off. Only blackness looked out from empty eye sockets. It's left arm had been cut off short of the wrist, and the bones poked out of the bloodless flesh at odd angles. The right arm, intact but fleshless, grabbed a rusted sword in its skeletal hand and it ran toward me.

At that moment, for the first time since waking, I heard a noise other than that of my own feet in the grass. It was a hoarse, raspy wail, long but with an abrupt end. I didn't realize until later that it came from my own mouth, not my attacker's.

The hours walking through the woods had not cleared the fog from my mind, and I was slow to react, despite the thing's lumbering run and initial distance from me. It raised its quivering left arm stump at me even as the right arm brought the sword down on an arc toward my neck. I tried to raise the spear to block his stroke - another second and I would have been cut in two. As it was the sword bit into my left arm, opening the flesh from the wrist to the elbow.

I fell backward onto the grass of the track. Another sword strike came down toward me. This time, however, I reacted quickly - mind and body both had been shocked into readiness. I rolled to my right, and with surprising dexterity I jumped to my feet. I swung the shaft of the spear at its side, striking the left shoulder with a solid blow. A man would have been winded and bruised, to say the least. This thing, however, responded only with another swing of his sword, which I stumbled backward to avoid.

Instead of standing my ground and fighting a thing that couldn't be hurt, I made a dash into the trees. As with the rest of the wood, they grew close together here, with dense underbrush and mossy logs creating further obstruction. I intentionally ran toward such blockades, thinking the thing would be less adroit than I. Surprisingly, it kept pace, and I could almost feel the sword cutting through the air mere inches from the back of my neck. I ducked and dodged, trying - and failing - to gain any separation.

The ground sloped downward in front of me, into a pool of brackish water about twenty feet across. A single fallen log spanned the pool, and I jumped onto it and scurried across, again hoping that it would slow down my pursuer. Instead of wading into the water, however, the creature jumped right onto the log behind me. Its weight, or ours combined, broke whatever it was that was holding the log aloft over the water, and with a sudden lurch, the far end of the log dropped down into the pool. I slipped on the moss-covered wood, and into the pool I tumbled.

The pool wasn't deep – not quite up to my knees, but the bottom was a layer of muck like mortar. I came up, still holding the spear, to find the thing standing over me, once more cutting an arc through the air with its blade toward my head. This time I stayed low, almost crouching in the water, and raised the haft of the spear at an angle above my left shoulder, gripping tightly in both hands. Instead of deflecting the blade, the spear hit the creature's wrist instead. Dry bones cracked, but did not break. The thing's sword, however, slipped from its grasp into the water.

I then swung the long end of the spear-blade down toward its waist. The blade bit deep into ragged scraps of cloth and chainmail that covered what was left of its flesh. I felt the sharp edge hit bone and knew it had met the spine. The creature lurched to the side, but did not fall, and suddenly I was in a poor position to defend myself. Barely missing a beat, it swung its right arm at my face. The hand, bereft of its sword, sported five fingers with long, sharp claws.

I jerked backwards, pulling my face out of the path of its swipe, even as the spear, still embedded in my enemy's side, twisted out of my grasp. I tried to pivot, but the thick muck of the pool bottom grabbed at my left foot and only grudgingly released. The delay gave the creature an easy shot at my left chest and shoulder. As I tumbled backwards into the water once more, I felt its claws rake through my skin and muscles, and a searing pain erupted across my chest.

It reached down for me as I lay on my back in the murk. One clawed hand and one bony stump closed in toward my neck. All I could do is raise my feet to ward it off, knees bent. It did not seem intent on pushing my legs out of the way, but instead almost threw itself on me, with my feet planted against its chest. Its clawed hand reached so close to my face that I had to throw my neck back and plunge my head and face under the water.

I kicked.

If ever there was a setup for launching some undead creature several feet into the air, this was it. The thing was lifted clear out of the pool, murky water spraying in all directions, and it fell backwards against the fallen log. There was a wet crunch of bones as it struck, but I knew that a couple cracked ribs would do nothing to stop this thing.

As I struggled with the muck to right myself and rise out of the water, my right hand closed on something hard and metallic – the handle of the creature's sword that had fallen into the water. By the time I was standing again, the thing had righted itself as well, standing with its back to the log, the empty eye-sockets fixed upon me.

Instead of waiting for the thing to come at me again, I lowered my head and advanced. I didn't think this thing had much imagination, and indeed my maneuver didn't seem to surprise it at all. It just reached out again with its arms, seeking to at last find my neck and rend the life from me.

I grabbed its right wrist with my left hand and stepped into it, ignoring the sharp bony ends of its severed arm even as they poked into my flesh. I had the edge in momentum, and I pushed it back onto the fallen log, bending its body back over the soft wood. Then I brought the thing's sword down, holding it like a dagger, plunging the blade through its rib cage and feeling it bite deeply into the soft wood of the log. I staggered backward.

The thing thrashed and kicked as it was pinned against the log. I quickly picked up my spear, which had escaped its flesh and fallen into the water during the melee. I expected that the creature would free itself and I braced myself for another attack, but it wasn't necessary. Lacking any creative problem-solving strategies, the monster struggled to stand, but the crosspiece of the blade held it down. Its arms reached out to me, grasping and clawing, but never once did it try to grasp the sword hilt and free the blade.

I let out a long breath, and for the first time, I was able to study the creature I fought. It was undead, clearly, and from the looks of things it was a simple minded thing of killing. A shiver went up my spine. I realized with great distress that although it had startled me when I came upon it, I was not surprised to see it here.

Why was that? Of course I knew of necromancy, I knew of the undead - Lifeless creatures raised to serve their masters with dark magics. Implacable fighting machines, as remorseless as they were deadly. They were monsters of shadowy places, of dark cabals, of...

I pulled my gaze away from the still-struggling creature and looked around me, at the unnatural gloom of the wood, the fungus and rot, the stillness. I staggered backwards as a vision came to me of a thousand such undead creatures, marching inexorably toward the homes of those I loved. I took in a sharp breath. Worst of all, I wasn't running away from them, I was marching along with them.

A sudden sharp clarity struck me then, so invasive and staggering that my legs faltered and I sunk into the water on my knees. I held my hands before my face, as I had hours ago, but this time I could see what was wrong. The skin of the fingers was thick, pale, and cyanotic. The nails were sharp enough to scratch the bark of a tree. These were not my hands.

The cut I had received on my forearm, which should have been bloody and disabling, had already started to heal. There was a faint blue glow where the muscle, sinew, and skin had laid back down in their appointed places on the bone, and were already sealing back together. I glanced down at the hole in my abdomen; it was long since gone, replaced by smooth, pale skin. I didn't need to see my chest to know that where the creature had clawed me, healing had already begun.

And as I gazed down, a sudden break in the clouds and haze above provided an ill-timed shaft of filtered sunlight, illuminating a reflection in the water of a man what was not me. Could not be me.

Two eerie points of blue light started back up at me, and its face twisted into a look of sheer horror, even as its mouth opened wide to let out an agonized wail that carried across the twilight woods.

* * *

So I started to learn what it was to live life in a dead body.

Of course I was only dead in the most technical sense of the word. Namely, that I had already died, and somehow I had been returned to life. It wasn't a benign event, however, brought about by some benevolent spirit. It was dark, unnatural - a thing of forbidden magics and necromancy. I think in those first few days, had I been able to, I would have tried to destroy myself. At the time I did not realize that the undead are not capable of such a thing. Apparently necromancers create fail-safe mechanisms into their monstrosities to prevent them from suddenly developing a conscience and trying to kill themselves.

I still had a pulse, although it was difficult to find anywhere but my neck. I pictured the dark blood moving sluggishly through my veins. I suspected that if I sat down for more than a few minutes it would stop altogether and only start again under protest.

I was glad to discover that my body was far more intact than the thing that had attacked me. My limbs all functioned, and were thankfully covered in skin, even if it was of the pale, rubbery sort. Although my eyes glowed with a faint, otherworldly blue, I was greatly pleased to note that I had actual eyeballs, instead of empty sockets.

Studying my image in the water, I noted that I seemed to have acquired a pair of intricate tattoos. A complicated rune of overlapping circles, triangles, and more mysterious symbols was indelibly printed on the skin of my forehead, under my shaggy mop of brown hair. Its twin was carved onto my chest, right over my heart. Both of the runes glowed a faint, cobalt blue, to match the glimmer of my eyes. Despite having been clawed across the chest, the rune over my heart showed not a trace of disruption, as if I was only looking at the projection of something fixed much deeper in my body.

In truth, I will admit, despite the trauma I had just experienced, and the shock of it all, I stared for many minutes at these strange runes. They gave me a bizarre sense of pride, of reassurance, that although I seemed to have shared a similar fate as the thing thrashing away on the log, we were not the _same_. It was something to grasp on to, some shard of new identity. I didn't realize then just how desperately important that was.

Plus, I've always liked that particular shade of blue.

Eventually, I had to do something. Shock had given way to practicality. Since I didn't really want to wait for my undead companion to figure out how to free himself, I grabbed my spear and hiked back to the narrow trail through the woods. I rather doubted that the creature was a particularly gifted tracker, and as I trudged along the path, my thoughts brooded on my condition and my attacker was forgotten.

I tried for hours to recall something - anything - from my life. I was haunted by brief images, fragmented sounds, even smells, and yet I couldn't tell if they were from my life, or something else entirely. I couldn't recall my own name, but others' would suddenly pop unbidden into my mind. Who were they? People I knew personally, or names of people I had heard of, or even characters from a story. I didn't know.

This is how my old life returned to me – my life from _before_ - in bits and pieces scattered like breadcrumbs across the landscape of my new life.

Time passed strangely, sometimes going so fast that I barely noticed the rising and setting of the sun, and sometimes so slowly that it seemed an eternity between footsteps. It wasn't my body, but my mind. I had moments of clarity and rapid, expansive thought – like when these strange memories would suddenly appear – encompassed by hours of numbness, when putting one foot in front of the other was my only occupation.

One thing I discovered about being undead was that my muscles did not tire. Even after the tension of fighting the undead creature, or the seemingly endless expanse of woods through which I traveled, I never sensed the need to rest. I would never say there was anything good about being undead, but perhaps there were a few compensations.

One evening I was surprised to suddenly hear noise and chatter of a flock of bats streaming forth from a nearby cave. As they were some of the only animals I had seen to that point, I stopped to watch. Apparently, I looked like a giant, edible moth, for a number of them swerved from their course and flew right at me. Almost without thinking, I swatted at them with my open hands. To my great surprise, I knocked two of them out of the air as they went by. It seemed that my reflexes had been greatly enhanced.

Several days passed thus before I realized another side effect of my present condition: the undead don't need to eat. Or drink. But there was a hunger, a gnawing need somewhere so deep within the body that it was hard to say if it was physical, mental, or otherwise. At times I was sure I needed to eat, but edibles were scarce in my new home. When at last I did come across some roots that did not look completely poisoned by whatever disease had stricken this forest, I found I could not stand to consume them. There was no taste on my tongue except for ash, and I discovered that my mouth was so desiccated I could not possibly chew anything. When I did manage to choke down a meager root, it sat in my stomach like a rock.

Perhaps the undead were meant to eat rocks instead, but I was in no mood to experiment.

I walked east, which seemed as good a direction as west. I stayed to the track, since the track was somewhere, which in my estimation was infinitely better than nowhere. I pressed on with a growing sense of urgency, although at the time I don't think I knew where it came from. I desperately wanted to find someone - anyone - but at the same time I feared they would be no different than the creature that was still pinned to the fallen log by its own sword.

Eventually, I got my wish.

After about five days and nights of walking (the undead don't need to sleep either) the track joined with a larger road. While still essentially a dirt swath cut through the woods, this one was much wider, had wagon tracks and hoof prints, and clearly saw much more recent use.

Opposite the point where the track joined the road, there was a 10' section of wooden fence, and on the other side, a very large tree stump. The stump was at least ten feet in diameter, making it one of the largest trees I had seen to that point. The top of the stump was smooth - it was clearly cut, and many years ago at that. Fixed into the wood of the stump was a signpost, and hanging from the signpost was a stylized wooden sign with gaily painted red arrow and lettering (albeit a bit faded) saying "Brill, 1/2 mile"

Suddenly I was rocked by a vivid image of a brighter time. Cool breeze blew through the trees, relieving the heat of a summer sun. A woman with auburn hair, rosy cheeks, and a playful smile stood sitting on the edge of the stump. Next to her was a little girl, four or five years old, with a face like her mother's. She stood on top of the stump, one hand grasping the signpost, the other waving. At me.

"Callie." My lips formed the word, but I spoke only in my mind. I wasn't sure if that name belonged to the woman or the girl.

I was torn from my reverie by the sudden realization that I and my memories were not alone.

Not fifteen feet down the road stood a silent figure. Unlike my previous encounter, this one was not ragged and unkempt with snapped off bones protruding at inconvenient angles. Instead, it was wrapped in a stylish - and new - red robe, complete with deep cowl. It covered most of the figure's person, save for leather boots underneath, and a gloved hand that rested lightly on the hilt of a dagger on it's belt. Two faint blue points of light glowed from within the darkness under the cowl.

I squared my shoulders against it and raised my spear, but the figure made no aggressive move. Instinctively I knew that it must not be the same sort as the one who attacked earlier – such things as that would never hesitate. Instead the two of us quietly regarded each other for several moments.

The figure took several measured steps forward, and pulled back its cowl. It was a woman. She had long, dark hair, pulled back into a braid behind her head. Her skin was alabaster, lips full and a starkly contrasting crimson, eyes cobalt. She had familiar runes traced across her forehead in the same fluorescent blue.

"Step forward," she said in a strangely familiar voice.

I did not sense that she meant me any harm, even though it was not hard to guess that she was also one of the undead. Hesitantly at first, then with more conviction, I approached.

When I got within a few feet, the air above her left shoulder started to shimmer, and I suddenly noticed that there was a creature perched there. Like a chameleon, it blended seamlessly into the scenery behind it. It's body was something like a monkey, covered with near-transparent scales instead of fur, with many-jointed limbs ending in prehensile paws. It had a long curling tail that wrapped around her shoulders and flicked playfully. Above the shoulders, however, it was nothing like a monkey. Instead it had an elongated, human-like face, with an over-sized bulbous nose, intelligent eyes, and enormous pointed ears that curled around in long arcs and wound up beneath its chin. Perhaps the dozen or more intricate earrings were weighing them down. The look on its face was less than friendly, but it said nothing.

"Throat dry?" she asked.

I nodded. She pulled from a pocket within her robes a metal flask, the sort that used to be popular to carry gin on one's person. She handed it to me, and although I wasn't too optimistic that it would taste better than mud and water, I took it and drank. To my surprise the liquid tasted of cherries and fire, warming my mouth, stomach, and whole body. I felt instantly invigorated.

"Better?" she asked. I nodded.

The creature on her shoulders cupped its hand over its mouth and whispered into her ear. At my curious expression, she explained. "Gabnip says he doesn't think you're Scourge." She turned to give the thing a pointed look. "As if I needed an imp to tell me that."

The imp rolled its eyes and muttered something else.

Turning back to me, she suddenly tilted her head and frowned. She reached out and grabbed what remained of the leather jerkin covering my chest, pulling it down to reveal the blue runes that seemed so similar to hers. She sucked in her breath, and then quickly reached upward to my forehead, roughly pulling back my hair. She was quite a bit shorter than I, and had to resort to standing on tiptoes. She stared a moment at my forehead, then stepped back.

The imp let out a low whistle. "Well, well..." it said in a high pitched voice.

Her mouth remained slightly ajar as she fixated on the runes. Pressing closer, she traced her finger along some of the blue lines. Gabnip the imp, meanwhile, recoiled from me even as the woman moved in, muttering something about "personal space". He flickered like a mirage seen too close, and was gone.

"Impossible," the woman breathed, "these are the same as mine! That would mean we were raised by the same..." Then she arched her head and neck upward toward mine, eyes narrowed, brows furrowed.

Her eyes suddenly grew wide, and she recognized me in the very same moment I recognized her.

"Sorin!" she cried, her throaty voice suddenly rising an octave. "It's me! It's Katrina!"

Suddenly she was the same teenage girl again, harboring a secret crush on me. If her skin could have blushed, it would have. She hesitated awkwardly for just a moment, then threw herself into my arms, hugging me tightly. "Isn't it wonderful? You've come back, and Risen, too! You're one of us now!"

"One of us?" I croaked, arms moving haltingly to return the embrace. My voice, still not quite ready to be used, was little more than a harsh squeak.

"Yes, one of us!" she cried, grinning broadly. Her eyes glowed brighter for a moment, with a hint of violet. "One of the Forsaken!"


	4. Chapter 2

_Chapter Two_

**One of the Forsaken**

"So you see," Katrina was saying animatedly as we walked, "Once the Lich King's telepathic hold on the Scourge was interrupted, Lady Sylvanas was able to exert control. She freed herself and the rest of us too."

"Sylvanas Windrunner?" I asked again, not the first time. I knew that name, although I did not know how I knew it. "Isn't she one of the High Elves from Quel'Thalas? What is she doing in Lordaeron?"

Gabnip, who had reappeared on Katrina's shoulder, rolled his eyes. "Sharp as a sword point, aren't we?" he said. "Keen as a knife. You've found a real winner here, mistress." As far as I could tell to that point, the imp's only purpose in life was to point out other people's inadequacies.

Katrina, who had patiently related all this as we walked toward Brill, glared at the imp, but let out her own exasperated sigh as well. "Sorin, weren't you listening? Sylvanas is undead now, like us."

The truth was, I was only half-listening. I did delight at meeting someone who did not want to claw my eyes out. However, as Katrina began to overwhelm me with details, my mind began to wander. Although I wasn't in the same mental fog that I suffered from in the beginning, I was only equipped to process one thing at a time.

"I'm sorry," I said, my voice getting easier to use. "It's just a bit hard to take it all in."

"Right," she said, "Sorry. I remember when I woke. I couldn't remember a thing. I was completely lost. It's good that I was just sitting in an abandoned house in town. I can't imagine how horrible it must have been for you to be lost in the glades for so long."

One of the first things I remembered about Katrina was how she liked to prattle on. Between her long explanations and Gabnip's running commentary, I didn't need to overtax my vocal cords.

As we moved toward the east, the forest started to thin out some. The road widened and became hard-packed with more consistent use. Occasionally side-roads would branch off, disappearing into the trees.

Ahead of us, on the right, the trees cleared suddenly, giving way to a rickety wooden fence that framed a rather overgrown lawn. The wilderness had recaptured the fenced area, but the place had been cleared of trees, giving us a clear view of the house that stood back away from the road. It was a two-story structure, built in the style that predominated in Lordaeron, with a large, wrap-around covered porch, large inset windows with wooden slats for awnings, and a thatched wooden roof.

On two sides of the building, opposite the road and extending toward the continuation of the fence in the distance, there was a small plot of land. In better times, this was private farmland, growing a variety of vegetables and some fruits for the family's consumption and to bring to the local market. Closer to the house, there was a garden with numerous varieties of flowers. There had even been a small section dedicated to growing some of the area's famous pumpkins.  
These were not, however, "better times."

The farmland had long since been overgrown with weeds and grass. The wooden fence that surrounded the property had collapsed, or had been crushed, at various points. The carefully cultivated flowers and shrubs of the garden had been overtaken by the wilderness, and the wilderness had been corrupted like the forests beyond. The house, too, was in similar disrepair. The windows in the upper story were broken without repair. The wooden slats of the walls, the roof, and the awnings were slowly rotting away, leaving scattered, jagged holes throughout the structure. The porch roof had crashed down some time previously, leaving a splintered wreckage of wooden planks that had punched through the floor of the porch.

A sign by the road closest to the footpath that led to the house declared "Good Hearth Manor."

The sign, unlike the structure, had been maintained and the lettering was still bright. However, crude white paint had been used to replace the word "Good" with "Cold".

Katrina, who had been strangely silent as we approached the house, stopped by the sign. She snorted. "Cold Hearth Manor" she said, "It's an improvement." She started to move on.

"Wait," I said, as memories of this place before the plague struck began to fit into place. "This is familiar..." I started to walk up the pathway.

As I did, Katrina jumped back from the road onto the path, almost running into me and grabbing my arm. "Sorin, please," she said plaintively, "We don't have time for this now. Please."

"I used to work on these gardens," I said, ignoring her pleading and stepping around to the side of the building, where the ruined porch ended.

I recalled working on the south side of the house, with the fresh scents of spring on the air, building small arbors and trellises that would be the centerpiece of their garden. The couple that lived here worked in the rows of plantings in the garden, while the little ones ran back and forth, trying to be helpful and getting in the way at the same time. Half the time they managed to hand me the correct tools, the other half they were trying to remember where they had misplaced them.

I smiled at my handiwork - the arbors still stood. They were overgrown with weeds and wild vines, some of which were still in leaf, but nonetheless I saw the structures still intact and sturdy. Several of the trellises had cracked or were leaning over away from the house with the weight of the vines that still clung to them.

I recalled being particularly fond of the rose arbor I had built on the corner of the house closest to the porch. It was designed to let the roses climb up and over, being visible from the road and porch both. It still stood, much as it once had, and a thick black vine with flowers still clung to it. Most of the leaves had dropped away, however, the flowers, which had darkened to the color of blood, still grew, albeit in a stooped, forlorn way.

I reached out my hand, cupping one of the roses. Instinctively, hardly realizing I was doing it, I willed the plant to grow, and felt that desire translated into a tangible, tingling energy that crossed my fingertips and into the plant. I felt, more than saw, the runes on my skin flaring cobalt blue.

The flower and the vine responded instantly, but not in the way I had anticipated. The flower flared, its petals opening, and it grew erect. Other tendrils of the vine reacted the same way, and suddenly most of the plant was suddenly writhing. Then, the unexpected occurred. While most of the flowers rose up and turned toward me, as if I was the sun itself, the undulating vines whipped around my arm and wrist like tentacles of a beast, constricting and tightening, even as their sharp thorns dug in deep to my skin.

Startled, I pulled my arm back to find that it was firmly held by half a dozen such tendrils. More were moving in my direction, reaching out as a blind man might, even as I moved away.

"Stop that!" I barked. Despite my sudden predicament, I felt momentarily awkward at the idea of speaking to the plant. In the space of a single breath, however, the thrashing of the vine ceased. I felt more confident. "Release me," I commanded. Then, strangely, I added, "Please."

The vine did as it was told, but the flowers did not resume their stooped position. If anything, they seemed all the more bright and alert, as if waiting for some other instruction. I took several steps back, bewildered.

"I see you still have the knack of talking to plants," Katrina said from behind me. I was so preoccupied I had not heard her approach.

"I used to do this?" I asked, but it was unnecessary. I could remember it now. I'd been doing it since I was a small child, encouraging plants to grow, telling the ivy, roses, and Silverleaf where I wanted them to climb, and how to array themselves. The weren't intelligent, of course - we didn't carry on conversations and the like. They just always seemed to know what I wanted them to do.

"Unnatural," commented Gabnip. "Unnatural. Unnatural. Unnatural."

"You used to win every year at the harvest festival," she said. "Didn't even matter what you grew. It was only a couple years after you came home from Dalaran that people stopped entering the competition. That's when you agreed to be a judge and not enter anything yourself. It wasn't fair."

I was about to ask something else when we were interrupted by another voice. "Hello," it said simply, belonging to the figure that stood in the doorway of the house.

The door had long since fallen away from its hinges, but this did not seem to disturb the person who stood there. She was undead, like us, but I could see no runes of the sort that Katrina and I both had. She had a gaunt face that had been torn away on the left side, revealing eye socket and the jawbone. I was not surprised to see there was no blood. Her ear on that side was torn in half, but that did not stop her from decorating it with several rings and jewels that matched the intact ear on the other side. Long dark hair lent a little grace to her otherwise horrific visage.

Her dress was the most impressive aspect of her appearance (once one got used to interacting with the dead, that is). It was a long, pink gown, quite new and well cared for, albeit with a little dirt on the hem. The color was vibrant, and it had intertwining lace that made a crisscross across her breast and waist. The lace was almost pristine white.

"Oh, boy, here we go again," muttered Gabnip.

"Hello," she said again. Her voice was flat, mechanical. Her facial expressions hard to discern, if there were any at all.

Katrina sighed, tugged my arm, and said in an annoyed tone "Come on Sorin, lets go."

Again, I resisted her tugging. "I'm sorry," I said. A name came into my mind. "Constance?"

"Mrs. Bribois," she corrected me. "What is your name, young man?"

"Sorin," I said, "Sorin... Trollbane." I wondered at the sound of my own voice. It seemed to remember my family name and speak it all on its own.

"Sorin Trollbane, excellent. Come inside, let me see if we have anything for you."

Katrina grew more annoyed. "Sorin, we're wasting time. We need to be in Brill."

I didn't mean to ignore the urgings of my new guide, but I stepped inside regardless, carefully avoiding a hole in the floor almost directly inside the doorway. Within, the great room was sparse, and what furniture there was had been unceremoniously pushed into the corners to make way for several tables. Various longstanding puddles of water dotted the floor, where it had leaked from the holes in the roof.

Upon the tables, in nicely organized stacks, were bolt after bolt of linen cloth of various colors. On other tables, there were scissors, balls of thread, measuring ropes, and needles. Discarded scraps of cloth nearly covered the floor, save where there were holes in the floorboards. Several chairs were pushed up to the worktables. Hanging against some of the drier, cleaner walls were piece after piece of finished clothing, from dresses and pants to fancy robes, capes, and sashes. Unlike the general state of affairs in the house, the cloth and clothing were very carefully arrayed, with neither dust, dirt, or dripping water touching them.

Mrs. Bribois made a show of perusing the various completed pieces, looking at each one in turn in a very businesslike manner. At last she turned back to me. "I'm sorry Mr. Trollbane, it does not appear that we have anything for you. Did you place an order?"

Slowly, I shook my head.

Suddenly, a pile of folded lavender cloth entered the room from another doorway. The pile was set on one of the tables, revealing its porter. If Mrs. Brisbois looked a bit worse for wear, this poor creature was grotesque. It walked stooped, its arms and legs almost completely skeletal, covered only by sporadic bits of flesh and meat that looked out of place. Its eye sockets were fleshy but otherwise empty - no light of any sort glowed within. The nose, cheeks, and forehead were intact, albeit the flesh that covered them was ratty and pockmarked. The lower jaw had been broken in half, and only the right side was still attached, hanging uselessly by strips of flesh and sinew. Half the skull was missing, cleaved off at an oblique angle. The open cranium was covered by several layers of linen cloth that had been sewn down to the forehead, the ear, and scalp. It wore only a ragged apron. Covering nearly every inch of its body - bone, flesh, even the linen headscarf - were splashes of dye in every conceivable color, as if it had just been assaulted by a legion of disgruntled undead painters.

The moment the creature came into view, Katrina, who had been standing in the doorway, turned away. Gabnip let out a long, low whistle.

This drew the attention of Mrs. Bribois. "And what is your name young lady?" she asked.

Katrina lowered her head, and started back out the door. "We're leaving," she muttered.

I only stood there, disquieted.

"Young Lady? What is your name? Do I know you?"

Katrina stopped in the doorway, letting out a long, fatigued breath. "Yes," she finally said, without turning around, "you know me. It's Katrina."

"Surname?"

"Bribois."

Mrs. Bribois' jaw moved for a moment without sound. "Oh," she said. Her right eyebrow narrowed, as if trying to work out a confusing riddle. Then, finally, the confusion passed. "Katrina Bribois. Right. Let me see what we have for you." She turned back toward the hanging garments.

"You don't have anything for me," Katrina said softly, resigned.

Meanwhile, the dye-covered creature, free of its load of cloth, had crept forward surprisingly quietly. It neared the doorway, and reached out a tentative hand toward Katrina. As if sensing his presence, she suddenly lurched forward, jerking her arm away. "Don't touch me!" she cried, raising a hand.

"Fry him," Gabnip urged. "Finish him off!"

Katrina put down her hand and fixed me with a steely look (and a flare of violet in her eyes). "Happy? Lets go. Now." With that, she walked determinedly down toward the road, and did not look back. After a moment's hesitation, I mumbled an apology to Mrs. Brisbois, and then jogged down to the road, falling in beside Katrina. Silence walked between us.

Finally, I had to ask. "What's wrong with them?"

She shrugged. "They're alright," she said, "They're Plagueborn, that's all. What can you expect?"

"Plagueborn? Like us?"

"No!" she replied emphatically, "Not like us. We're Risen. They're Plagueborn."

"Big difference," said Gabnip in a singsong voice, "Huge."

"What is the difference?" I replied, ignoring him.

"We have souls, they don't."

"What?" I stopped in the road. "What do you mean?" I wasn't sure if I was more disturbed to hear that they didn't have souls, or that we _did_.

She turned back to face me. "It's really quite simple," she said. "They are Plagueborn. Anyone killed by the Plague of Undeath becomes undead several days later. They became creatures of the Lich King, monsters in his army. The Risen are different. We weren't killed by the plague at all."

That contradicted an assumption I had been making all along. "I wasn't killed by the Plague? I have... memories. Being sick, I mean. Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

I was unconvinced, and apparently it showed. She stepped forward, and put her hand on my Heartrune. It seemed to glow just a bit brighter at her touch. Her hand lingered there a moment, and then she touched a peculiar scar, on the skin right underneath the rune. It was not a very old scar at all; in fact, it was almost more of a fresh wound that had recently closed. It was right over my heart.

"I know because I stabbed you here," she said, "before the plague could finish you." She moved her fingers to her own breast, tugging down the top of the robe to reveal the glowing blue runes, and a bit of skin underneath. "Just before I stabbed myself in the same place."

I chewed on this for a moment, then asked "So then how did we end up... like this?"

"We were Raised," she replied. "That's what I was trying to tell you before. We were brought back to life with advanced Necromancy, the same kind that was used on Lady Sylvanas herself. To do so, you must recall the soul and bind it to the body. That's what the runes are for. The Heartrune ties the soul to the body, and the Mindrune ties our thoughts, our mind, to the soul as well. It's what allows us to learn, to gain in power, to regenerate our wounds. It makes us... real, alive. You can't raise someone who has been dead very long, so our bodies tend to be pretty well preserved... depending on what killed us in the first place, of course."

"And your mother, she doesn't recognize you because she's Plagueborn?"

She nodded. "She did at first. She hugged me the first time I saw her again. She told me everything was going to be fine, and we'd all be a family like before. My father and brothers hadn't returned, but she said they'd be back any day. I knew something was wrong, though, because she kept confusing me with my sister Alia. I had to correct her all the time. 'Of course, dear' she'd say, but then she'd call me Ali again thirty seconds later."

"Then I was sent to receive my calling, and start my training. By the time I was able to see her again, she'd been attacked by a Scourged. It walked right into the manor, and, well... took her face off. Apothecary Holland fixed it up, but she was never the same again. She wasn't Risen, she couldn't regenerate. Plagueborn don't heal, they just slowly... fall apart. Until they're Rotten."

"Rotten?"

"Yeah, Rotten," she said. "Being undead prevents any kind of natural decay of the body, but stuff happens, you know? They get attacked by Scourged, or plaguehounds, or they can have accidents - Plagueborn can be very accident prone. So over time they just fall apart. When the brain or the body is so far gone that it is no longer functional, we call them 'Rotten'. They wander around aimlessly, or just sit, staring into space."

I repressed a shudder. "What happens then?"

"To Rottens? The apothecaries use their body parts to stitch up the wounded, or on their creations."

Another shudder. I didn't bother to repress it. Katrina's casual description of the fate of her own mother disturbed me. I knew Constance and her husband, Bowen, had always been kind neighbors, even if I couldn't quite remember what they looked like before the plague.

"What about your father and brothers?" I asked.

"I never saw my brothers again," she said. "I guess they didn't survive their time in the Lich King's army. As for Bowen, well, he got pretty beat up from the looks of it. He's pretty close to Rotten now. I am not sure how long he will be able to help my mother with her tailoring."

I stopped suddenly. "_That_ was Bowen?" I asked, incredulous. Suddenly I felt horribly guilty for going up to the house.

She nodded, then shrugged, and we kept walking. "There's nothing to do about it. The Dark Lady freed them so they can serve the Forsaken, and they will until they can't any longer. When my mum can't sew clothes anymore, she'll be brought to the Undercity, and be incorporated into an abomination, which will protect the Dark Lady for years to come."

I nodded. Katrina had already described the secret Undercity, its apothecaries and abominations, as well as her Dark Ladyship several times along the road, and I didn't have an urge to ask more questions about them. There was, however, one thing that had been nagging at me.

"Katrina, did I have a family?"

She fixed me with an inscrutable look, then gave a non-committal shrug. "Yeah, I guess so," she said, as if she found the topic pointless and banal. She added a step to her stride.

"Guess so?" I replied, perturbed at her sudden dismissive tone, "What were their names? Did I have children? What happened to them?"

"Forget about them," she said firmly, tone turning to annoyance. "They're gone now."

I gripped her shoulder, turning her toward me. "Forget? I've forgotten everything already. I need to remember!"

Her scowl softened as she looked at my face. "Sorry," she said, with a resigned sigh. "Yes, you had a wife and a daughter – Annika and Callie, I think. But, Sorin, they're long gone now. You sent them away before the plague started." She patted my arm in consolation. "Trust me," she added, "You're Forsaken now. It's best to forget them."

I was about to comment on that thought, when Katrina stopped and pointed. In the distance I saw buildings clustered around the road. "There we are," she said with a cheerful smile, overtly trying to change the subject. "Remember Brill?"


	5. Chapter 3

_Chapter Three_

**Our Dark Lady Demands...**

"Is there naught we can do?" asked Adamant, as he stood over the body of his friend.

"Leave him," replied Vincent, using the cloak of another of their fallen companions to wipe the blood from his weapons. "The runes are gone. He is nothing but a corpse now. The wolves will take what's left."

Paul Terrant had been one of Adamant's best friends in life. They played together as children living in the slums of Lordaeron City. Paul's sister Elizabeth had been Adamant's first love (and the cause of more than one fist fight between the two of them). After the plague, and Adamant's Awakening, Paul had been his Guide, helping him through his transition. Most importantly, Paul convinced him to join the Deathstalkers, at last giving his Second Life a sense of purpose.

"We have to at least bury-"

"No!" Vincent rejoined harshly, "We are Deathstalkers, Adam. Our Dark Lady demands we do nothing but our duty. Our priority is the mission, nothing else. If we tarry here, more Worgen will come. We have to keep moving." He pointed a long, skeletal finger at the three corpses of their companions, who had fallen amidst the bodies of their ambushers. "They are not our friends anymore. They're less than Rotten now. So let them rot."

Being undead was a strange thing that Adamant, like most of the Risen, struggled for months to accept. Yet he came to see the life in his new friends, read the expressions in their faces. There was laughter in the Undercity, and joy, and disappointment, and pain – perhaps not of the very same sort as he had known before, but they did exist. The Risen had souls.

Adamant looked forlornly at the ground, his gaze shifting from Paul to the other two, taking in the features of their faces in turn. Vincent was right. This corpse that lay at Adamant's feet was not Paul at all. It had died many years ago, and had been preserved so that Paul's soul could live within it. The bright golden runes on its forehead had faded to charcoal, the lights in its eyes were dark and gone. The Worgen had so grievously injured him that his Heartrune was obliterated completely in a carnage of chainmail, torn flesh, ribs, and dark blood. Like a marionette without its puppeteer, the corpse was empty and meaningless.

Vincent pushed a hunk of cheese into his hands. "Eat," he said, "you need to regenerate."

Absently Adamant put the cheese into this mouth and chewed. There was a hole at the base of his jaw, apparently some injury he sustained before his death. The apothecaries in the Undercity had sewn cadaver flesh into it and stitched it tight, but it always came loose, making chewing and swallowing difficult to do. This time Adamant didn't even notice.

The cheese wasn't human food, of course. That would do nothing for a Deathstalker. It had been grown deep in the caves beneath the Undercity, steeped in the ichor of undeath. Adamant's rosy colored runes flared slightly as the wounds he had sustained during the fight began to heal more rapidly. Normally he delighted in the warm sensation, the sudden rush of energy and well being that such food provided. Not today.

The image of the empty shell of a man, long since dead, who had only this morning shared crude jokes and banter with Adamant haunted him as he stood. For the first time since Awakening, he felt hollow and empty. Was he the marionette, or was he the puppeteer? Was there even a difference?

Vincent, misunderstanding Adamant's sudden despondence, nonetheless laid a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry. Paul was a good friend," he said, softening his normally brusque tone. "He was a good Deathstalker. He gave his Second Life for us all, for our Queen. Remember why we're here, Adam. We must keep going, we've got to find out what Arugal is up to, and we must make sure the Queen is warned. The Forsaken are in danger. Our people, Adam."

With that, one blade in hand, Vincent set off again through the trees. A moment later, Adamant sighed, and began to follow.

"We'll all end up like that someday, won't we? Like Paul."

Vincent did not look back again, he only muttered, half to himself.

"Yeah, like Paul."


	6. Chapter 4

_Chapter Four_

**Gallows End**

It was a strange thing, being asked if I remembered Brill.

The temptation was to say "Of course not! I don't remember anything!" but that wasn't entirely true. My memory was a beautiful, tragically shattered window into my past life. The pieces were haphazardly scattered across some hidden mental landscape. A few were just large enough to offer tantalizing glimpses of the whole, while most were nothing more than teases, shards of some fractured mosaic that never quite fit together.

There was little conversation between us as we walked down the road that went toward the center of town, as I was focused completely on the town and its people. I was endlessly frustrated by the occasional sharp moments of recollection – a signpost here, the slant of a rooftop there. I would have vastly preferred to walk down the street of a completely foreign city, instead of being assailed by the unavoidable reality that I _should_ know this place. I used to know this place.

The townsfolk, on the other hand, were truly alien to me.

Although I suppose I should not have been, I was stunned by the sheer number of them. It was like any other town. People passed us on the street, talking quietly, carrying packages or tools or nothing at all. The smithy was alive with spark and flame, I could hear metallic hammer-strikes over the breathing of the billows, and even caught a glimpse of a Bowen-like figure, stained by soot instead of dye. Two boys sat on the steps of the tannery, arguing over the lion's share of an apple as if nothing had changed.

Something had changed, of course. These boys were no longer alive.

I tried not to look at the people as we passed. Unlike everything else, I didn't want to remember them. It was one thing to recall what Katrina had been like before. Minus the glowing eyes and strange pet, she hadn't changed much. Visions of Constance and Bowen, however, percolating up from the swirling miasma of my memory, pained me greatly. They'd both been handsome, as their children were. They had an old-fashioned kindness to them, never too busy to entertain a friend or help rebuild someone's broken fence.

They always had homemade sweets to give to my daughter.

Of course, that was the real reason I didn't want to look at anyone's face too closely. It was agonizing, the desperate desire to see my family again mixed with the horrible fear they would be among the ravaged, near mindless things that occasionally passed, staggering as best they could down the street, missing eyes, nose, limbs, and not particularly caring.

We approached the town square. From here, four roads led in all directions to the outlying communities and beyond. The square was therefore also the central market. The old cobblestones of the street had not been well maintained, but the volume of traffic through the square served to keep the grass coming up between the stones at bay. Most of the square was lined with buildings, some in better shape than others. To the southeast, however, the square was open to a large hill beyond, atop which a tall stone tower stood. It had been recently built, wooden scaffolding still in place.

A number of carts and stalls had been erected in the square. One was particularly impressive, composed of three joined wagons, each with makeshift shelves covered in a dizzying array of foodstuffs, clothes, and various bits of equipment and tools. There were barrels of dried meats and bread, coils of rope, and even weaponry such as quarrels of crossbow bolts, daggers, and spears. It was an armory, grocery, and general store. The wagons even had several multicolored awnings to keep the rain out.

There was a single woman busying herself in front of it, arranging several ornate, ivory-handled daggers. The woman was dressed in a long blue gown, well-cared for, and had long white hair in a single braid down here back, in much the same style as Katrina's. Katrina ran over to her, and as the woman turned around, gave her a hug.

"Kat!" said the woman, in a pleasant but hoarse voice, "You're back! You look wonderful!" Her exuberance took me by surprise, especially after having walked through a town of the somber undead.

Katrina took a step back and admired the petite woman. "You look wonderful too!" she enthused.

The woman smiled broadly, held two edges of her dress out to show it better, and spun around. "Do you like? Your mum made it for me. She's still got the touch." Her gaze turned on me, and then I saw that she, too, had a faintly glimmering rune on her forehead, albeit a forest green instead of our cobalt blue. "And who do we have here? A Risen? Kat, you didn't tell me you found yourself a boyfriend!"

I stepped closer as Katrina introduced us. "This is my auntie, Mrs. Winters," said Katrina. "And this," she said, flashing Mrs. Winters a wide grin, "is Sorin Trollbane."

Mrs Winters' eyes widened with a brighter green. "By the Lady!" she breathed, "it is Sorin! And..." Her eyebrows furrowed as she scrutinized my forehead. I felt like a circus tiger with a rare color of stripes. "Is that..?" She looked back and forth between Katrina and myself. "It looks..."

"Yep!" Katrina said proudly, "They're the same."

Mrs. Winters folded her arms and stepped back. Pouting, she said, "Well that's unfair. I was in the same room, too, and all I got was some apprentice who could barely draw."

Katrina rolled her eyes.

Mrs. Winters then turned her attention back to me. "So, Sorin, 'Welcome Home' seems appropriate. Where have you been stationed recently? Are you here to stay or just passing through?" She then seemed to take notice of my tattered clothes for the first time. "My goodness, you haven't been held prisoner in some human-infested cave have you? You look dreadful."

"Uh, no," I started to say.

"He just woke," Katrina said, "I found him wandering the glades on my way home."

"New Risen?" she exclaimed, "Fantastic! I guess you'll be wanting to take him to see the Dark Lady right away then? We should dress him a little more appropriately, however."

Now I was starting to feel less like a circus tiger and more like a two year old.

"No, not just yet" said Katrina, "I'm meeting my master here. Zargath thinks it would be good for us to get some practice before we head south."

"Oh, well, perhaps Beryl can do it then. If I see him, I will tell him you're looking for him."

"Mrs. Winters," I said, getting tired of being spoken about but not to, "what did you mean about 'getting some apprentice'. Are you not one of the Risen too?"

"Of course I am dear," she replied, "I just wasn't raised by the same necromancer that did the two of you. Mine was a meddler with considerably less skill. He was probably just bored."

"That's completely untrue," argued Katrina. Turning to me, she added, "Auntie is one of Lady Sylvanas' most trusted Forsaken."

"Selling dried fruit on market day?" I asked. Apparently, it came out sounding more derisive than I meant.

Without warning or wasted movement, the petite old woman turned to the shelves, grabbed one of the ivory-handled daggers, and with one fluid motion, unsheathed it, stepped forward, and plunged it hilt-deep into my abdomen. The strength of the thrust greatly belied her slender arms and benign appearance. I staggered under the force of the blow and her unexpected fury. I tumbled full on my back, my spear falling from my hand to clatter uselessly on the cobblestones.

Mrs. Winters made no further threatening move, nor did Katrina jump to my defense. They both simply stood where they were, gazing impassively at me. For my part, I returned the stare, unmoving, still reeling from the shock.

"Lessons for the newly Risen, rule number one," said the old woman. "Never underestimate the Forsaken." With that utterance, she bent forward, grabbed my hand, and hauled me to standing position as if she were a muscular 250 pound man.

"You can keep that," she said, pointing to the dagger and handing me its sheath. "Consider it a reminder of a lesson learned."

She then turned back toward Katrina, the stern expression on her face dissolving back into that of a kindly old grandmother. "It's so good to see you again dear," she purred, "but you'd better run along. It's not wise to make your master wait." She gave Katrina another hug, and then said to me, "And it's lovely to see you again Sorin. May the Dark Lady smile on you!"

We turned to go, Katrina in high spirits and I feeling like I was trapped in a dream world that just kept getting more bizarre by the minute. We didn't take five steps when Mrs. Winters whistled after us. She pointed to my abdomen, where the dagger still protruded. "Take that out, dear," she said kindly, "or someone will mistake you for Rotten."

* * *

As expected, the dagger wound – one that would have killed a living man – bled for a while and then started to close with a soft blue glow. There really wasn't that much pain. That in itself was fairly disturbing. "So, we can never be killed, then?" I said as we walked across the square.

Gabnip suddenly flickered into view. It was easy to forget that he was even there. "Lets find out!" he said enthusiastically, raising both hands over his shoulders with his fingers pointed at me.

"Oh, we can be killed all right," Katrina replied with a bemused smile. "There are lots of ways. But we aren't delicate, like the living. You can't just poke us with a sword. It has to be more... violent."

"Oooh, like Nizzurd's Conflagration perhaps?" said Gabnip, beady eyes still targeting me. "Or good old Shadowflame? My old master used to love that one!"

"Exploding Imp is my favorite," Katrina commented dryly, not bothering to even look at the creature.

"Exploding Imp?" Gabnip said, pausing thoughtfully. "Don't know that one..."

* * *

The inn that Katrina led me to was not quite as neglected as the rest of the town's buildings. The shingles that covered the structure were dilapidated and water damaged, but there were no gaping holes in the roof, no collapsed walls, no jagged pieces of wood sticking out of the porch. The front door was intact. Warmth and light streamed from the windows only to be quickly smothered by the pervasive gloom.

The sign hanging by the door had once depicted a great tree, with "Inn of the Weeping Willow" written in fancy letters below it. A stick figure had been drawn in, hanging from a noose under a branch of the tree. Gaudy white paint splashed across it now read "Gallows End".

"Why do people keep changing the names of places around here?" I said, somewhat affronted, as I suddenly recalled having carved that sign.

"What - you don't think the name is appropriate? I think it has a ring to it."

"_Gallows End?_"

I held the door for Katrina, who flashed me a grin as she strode inside. Gabnip remained invisible, but I heard his voice purring sarcastically about how genteel I was. I felt awkward walking into such an establishment carrying a weapon - even if my spear had been more of a walking stick than anything else - so I leaned it up against the inside of the doorway.

The dagger, however, I kept hidden in my boot. _Rule number one_, I thought to myself, _Never underestimate the Forsaken_.

The company within would have belonged in any inn in any town, save for the fact that none of them were among the living. A cheery fire blazed away in the oversized hearth, and the tables around it were occupied by all manner of the undead. A couple looked like Katrina - well dressed, well kept, glowing runes in different colors on their heads and chests, and glimmering in their eyes. Most of them, however, were Plagueborn, their clothing and bodies in various states of disrepair.

I was slightly surprised to realize how easy it was becoming to tell the difference.

A serving girl lurched jerkily about the room carrying a platter laden with bowls of some kind of stew. She was dressed in a white frock with a golden braided belt around the midsection. It had an exotic look, and would have been seemly had it not been for the immense tear in the back, or the bloodstains that still marred the dress after so long. Although most of her seemed intact, including face and arms, one leg was noticeably shorter than the other. As she passed by, I saw that there was no foot, only a stump. It was surprising she could manage to carry anything with such a limp.

She strode right by us, not acknowledging us or inviting us to sit down. She didn't even look in our direction. "We seat ourselves," said Katrina, moving toward the last remaining unoccupied table of any size. "She'll only notice us if we are sitting down."

I followed her without comment, preferring instead to scrutinize the inn's guests. Of the dozen or so people seated here, only two - the Risen - lifted their eyes to meet ours. The rest carried on as they were. There were conversations in hushed voices at several tables. Some of the guests were simply staring at the fire, others ate and drank. One man, whose lower face and jaw was a jumble of decaying flesh and bits of broken bone, poured wine from a goblet into this mouth, and straight down onto his shirt front. From the deep purple stains on his jacket and pants, it seemed that he'd been doing this for a long time. A puddle of wine formed on the floor.

"Why on Azeroth do they eat?" I asked, remembering my early attempts to consume some of the forest's roots and berries, "or drink for that matter?"

She shrugged. "Plagueborn," she said with disdain, as if that explained the matter.

The look on my face must have suggested that it didn't. She shrugged. "It's just what they do, you know? It's what they used to do, before they died. So, they keep doing it. Most don't eat very much, they just pick at their food, really. But they come here every night, they pay for it..."

"They have money?" I asked, slightly surprised.

"Of course they have money. How else would they pay for it?"

I conceded the point, although somehow it still seemed odd to me. My eyes landed on one Plagueborn man, sitting by the fire. He wore an old top hat and long dark coat, well maintained, although smudged and dirty from long wear. A cup of wine sat on the table, but his focus was on a flat, silver object he held in both hands. He was crooning some old song, mostly to himself. Considering his circumstances, he carried the tune rather well, although softly. As we passed close, I could see the object was a silver locket, the sort that one might put a tiny drawing of a loved one in.

"They're trying to hold on to the lives they used to have," I thought out loud, "Trying to hold on to their humanity." Suddenly I didn't feel quite so much revulsion for them.

Katrina obviously didn't share my sympathy. "Guess so," she mumbled, as she took a seat at the table.

I was about to ask who the other two risen in the common room were when our attention was drawn to the door which banged open. In walked three people, and in an instant I was on my feet, fists clenched, the strange adrenaline of the undead energizing me. I was no soldier, I knew that much, but I recognized enemies when I saw them.

The leader of the group was an orc. At that moment I knew that I had never met one, but there was no doubt. His slender frame was wrapped in a black robe with streaks of crimson that looked like blood. His hood was pulled back revealing a thin, bald head, and mottled green skin. He had small, black eyes, deeply inset, hiding behind a thin pair of spectacles. Despite the lack of hair on his head, his chin sported a long goatee of frizzy black hair. He walked with a tall staff of bleached wood - actually two pieces, thin, twisting like vines around each other, and embedded into the base of a skull of some animal - jackal perhaps - at the top.

At the orc's right was another creature I knew by description but had never met - a troll. Hunched over, he nonetheless stood head and shoulders taller than his companion. His face was elongated, all nose and grinning mouth. He sported an immense mop of disheveled hair the color of rich red wine, shooting outward from his scalp in all directions. A pair of upturned tusks protruded from his mouth. Their color was a bleached white, but covered with a series of tiny blue symbols. He wore a fur shawl about his shoulders, with a pair of animal skulls set at each end, and underneath, a long silky blue cape that flowed down his back to the floor. He wore trousers and leather boots, but his chest was uncovered, revealing skin covered almost entirely in blue runic tattoos similar to those on his tusks.

Almost hidden behind these two was a third man, one of the Forsaken. Alabaster skin was pulled tightly over his gaunt skull, points of cherry-red light flickered inside his empty eye sockets. Runes on the side of his head and glowing underneath his robes marked him as one of the Risen.

Katrina rose to her feet. For an instant I expected that the dining patrons, Plagueborn or not, would attack the orc. When they did nothing except to glance up briefly at the newcomers, I let out the breath I'd been holding. Who knew how these Forsaken would react to an orc? Perhaps they did not care about their old enemies.

The three newcomers strode quickly to our table. Beside me, Katrina bowed down before the orc, face subdued. "Master," she intoned. I raised my eyebrows.

The orc did not respond to her at all, but rather dissected me with his intense black eyes. He said nothing. The troll gave a curious glance at me, a faint wave of his hand toward Katrina, and then moved in the direction of the bar. The Risen with the red eyes, however, brushed past the other two and came right at me, stopping only a foot away from me.

"So the rumors are true," he said in a voice like razor blades being dragged across gravel, "as I heard from the toadies in town. A new Risen, come to visit. Where do you serve? What is your Calling?"

I blinked at him. "I... what?"

"He's with me, Dark Cleric," Katrina stepped in smoothly, "he just woke. Isn't it exciting? We were going to go look for you, to-"

"How does this concern us?" the orc suddenly said, voice smoother than I expected. "Leave him to the others."

Katrina quickly lowered her head, murmuring "Master, I obey... You're right, of course. But, could we not have the Dark Cleric perform the Reading now? Sorin is an old friend of-" Suddenly, from her bent posture, her hands clasped her abdomen, and she sank back into her chair, moaning and doubling over. I heard, rather than saw, a muffled yelp coming from her right shoulder, and saw one of the other chairs abruptly tip backwards as her invisible imp scrambled away from his groaning mistress.

Startled, I bent forward to help, although I did not know what to do. She retched, and a tiny amount of blood and vomit spattered the table. "What-" I began, hesitant.

The Dark Cleric stepped forward. "Warlock," he said, "discipline your student elsewhere." He turned a hard gaze on the orc. "End it, or I may misinterpret your chastisement as an attack on the Forsaken."

The bespectacled orc bowed his head very slightly, and inclined it toward the the Dark Cleric. "Of course, Beryl," he said demurely, "How inconsiderate of me. You no doubt have delicate sensibilities regarding your own... kind."

Suddenly Katrina gasped, and a flush of almost human color spread across her face. She lifted her body away from the table she had sprawled on, but kept her eyes down. "Master, I..." she murmured. The rest was too soft to hear.

The cleric then turned to me, and reached out his desiccated arms to my face. I flinched unwillingly. "New Risen do not awake every day," Beryl said. The expression in his eyes, which were nothing more than points of flickering light within empty eye sockets, was impossible to read. Nonetheless, I felt his eyes boring into my skull, a sensation that grew increasingly uncomfortable.

There was a pause in time, and silence was suddenly draped across the inn. I felt, rather than saw, every eye in the place, Plagueborn or otherwise, fixed on me. The moment stretched. Somehow, I sensed another presence in my... not my mind, but somewhere else, somewhere beyond my body, sacred and private. It was like a sudden sensation that a prowler was snooping unseen about your home. Then, just as suddenly, it was gone.

I focused on the red eye-lights again. Beryl drew his face back, brow furrowed, focused in the distance. "I don't know..." he murmured slowly, "I don't know what it means." Then he looked back at me, his eyes digging in once more. "Who are you?" he demanded harshly, "Where do you come from? What was your first life?"

"I'm Sorin," I replied hesitantly, unsure of just what he meant. "I... used to live here, in Brill." I gazed around the inn again, as tiny, familiar details jumped out at me, even if the whole was still a clouded picture. I pointed to the stairs, to a figurine of a crouching lion that had been carved into the top of the bannister. "I carved that lion," I added, "and... the sign, out front. Before it was changed." Heat rose in my cheeks, my ridiculous answer leaving me feeling chagrined.

Beryl scowled. "I don't care about carvings!" he cried. He turned to address the rest of the group. "He must be brought to see her, immediately." His eyes turned to Katrina. "Take him at once."

The orc stepped forward just slightly. "I'm afraid not, my good cleric. My apprentice is indisposed. We are on a high priority mission – assigned to us, I might add, by your own Dark Lady. You understand."

Beryl regarded the orc. Clearly, there was no love lost between them. "Then he will go with another."

"Please," Katrina interjected, imploring by turn the orc and then Beryl. "I have to take him. I am his Guide. It's tradition."

"Absolutely not," said the orc. The venomous look in his eye belied his soft voice.

"No," said Beryl at the same instant.

"He can come with us," she insisted, even though she was half-stooped as if she expected the unseen hand of punishment to strike again, "please, master, I humbly suggest. He is a tracker and a guide. He knows the woods very well." She was talking fast now, as if hurrying to get it all in before she was silenced. "He knows those farms. He can help us, another pair of eyes. We have to return to the Undercity to report afterward anyway, and he can have his audience then."

I heard a faint, unseen voice in the distance, close to the kitchen, muttering "Be nice, be nice, oh, please, be nice now..."

The orc regarded me silently, while Beryl folded his arms across his chest. Neither party was enthusiastic about the idea.

"He's not part of my team," said the orc, "if he gets hurt, that's his own problem."

"If he fails to report to her Dark Majesty," growled Beryl, fixing Katrina with a stare, "your master's curses will seem like lullabies compared to what I'll do to you."

I gulped, but Katrina stood tall and grinned like a kid in a candy store.


	7. Chapter 5

_Chapter Five_

**Restless**

Arugal stood on the tower balcony, gazing downward.

Two hundred feet below the great tower was the open expanse of the castle courtyard. It was, in essence, Silverlaine Keep's main thoroughfare. At the east end stood the stalwart main gatehouse, whose four barbicans, complex portcullis, and mechanical drawbridge system, dwarven designed and built, had protected the keep's inhabitants for hundreds of years. Adjacent to the inside of the gatehouse were the east barracks and main stables.

Silverlaine Keep had been built upon a tall bluff at an unusual junction where foothills met the ocean. The only reasonable access to the keep was to the east, for the south and west sides were the sheer drop-off of a steep escarpment, and to the north was a jagged set of rocky hills. The approach from the east was well defended. The dwarven engineers that had helped build the keep dug out a steep ravine running along the entirety of the eastern wall. It was a hundred feet deep, thirty feet wide, with only sharp rocks and scattered refuse at the base. The only way across was the drawbridge; when it was raised, the fortress was all but impregnable from ground assault.

Following the gangway from the gatehouse, a visitor would come upon the bailey square of the courtyard. On market days, the square would be packed to overflowing with merchants, entertainers, travelers, as well as the folk who lived and worked in the keep itself. Beyond the two hundred foot expanse of well-worn cobblestone, the courtyard wound into the "Artisan's Warren", so named for the smithy, tannery, tinker, and other establishments where the skilled plied their trades.

The south side of the courtyard was a great curtain wall, a solid support for the bastions and towers, with ramparts running above. The north side, however, was a series of arcades, through which could be reached private apartments and guest quarters. It was here that carts and wagons would often be parked, just inside the arcade arches, enabling the merchants to display their wares to the courtyard passers-by while being out of the rain, out of the wind, and most importantly, out of the way.

Looking down on the courtyard, Arugal could close his eyes, and picture such a busy market day scene. Although Arugal had little use for markets or crowded courtyards, Jenna used to look forward to market days with childish glee. She always said they were the days that made Silverlaine Keep seem the most alive, the most vibrant.

Not this day, however, and not this keep.

Silverlaine Keep, the cultural and military hub of all Silverpine, unconquered for hundreds of years, had at last fallen. In its place stood Shadowfang Keep, so christened by Arugal, its lord and master. Festive market days, gaily painted banners, raucous crowds – these things had no place here anymore. Gone were the laughing children, singing minstrels, and haggling merchants. They, like all the other inhabitants of the keep, had perished months ago.

All except Arugal.

Yet their spirits persisted, earthbound, tortured, haunting the very place they had died. Arugal knew they blamed him for their demise. He could sense their outrage, their bottled up malice, even from atop his tower. When he gazed down from his balcony – something he did often – he would see them moving about in the bailey, drifting aimlessly from one place to another, longing to find a target for their vengeance.

Strangely, they did not attack, or indeed even acknowledge the Worgen. Arugal knew, through instinct rather than some dark divination, that they would recognize _him_. In the early days following their deaths, he felt their disembodied but palpable hatred directed toward him as he moved about the keep. More recently, the spirits took more recognizable forms, and Arugal knew these manifestations existed for a single purpose: revenge.

Arugal did not fear them at first. Angry spirits they may have been, but still just spirits – impotent remains of lives cut short by tragedy. How could they harm a master of both arcane magic and shadowcraft? But as their manifestations grew more tangible, so did the threat they posed.

He knew that there was no point in trying to communicate with them. How did one placate a vengeful ghost? The horror of their final moments was imprinted on their very souls. Arugal would soon be forced to eradicate them.

He remembered their final day like it was yesterday, the argument with Jenna and her odious sister – one of many, it seemed – and the sounding of the Balehorn. He recalled the soldiers rushing to their posts, and the small-folk of the keep fleeing to their apartments, the same look of apprehension on everyone's face.

Arugal, however, knew this day was coming. He had been warned.

The warning came in the form of a prophecy, given to him by the spiritual leader of the tribe of Worgen that he had summoned. The prophet's name was Odo. He was one of the Worgen, and yet aloof from them as well. He was blind in both eyes – definitely not a warrior. He preferred to stay sequestered away in an old storeroom attached to the northeastern bastion.

He was instrumental in aiding Arugal with controlling and directing the savage beasts. Arugal had a measure of innate control over them granted to him by the means with which he summoned them, but it was a hesitant, slippery kind of control, the sort that a corrupt king might have over his councilors, just before they overthrew him. Odo taught Arugal the rudiments of his people's culture, motivation, and instincts, as well as the basics of their language, even as he quickly learned to speak Arugal's.

Communication, however, was not Odo's only gift. By means of augury with the spirits of his people, he was able to tell the future. Of course, this talent, combined with Arugal's power over the Worgen, enabled him to direct the skirmishes against the Scourge, miles from the gates of Silverlaine Keep, with deadly effect.

Only two days before the Worgen returned to Silverlaine Keep, Odo spoke to Arugal. The people of the keep, as well as the Baron and his men, had grown quite wary of the marauding Worgen. Rumors abounded that the creatures indiscriminately attacked the living as well as the undead. Arugal knew that at least some of these rumors were indeed true; he had seen the ugly consequences first hand. He would not heed the calls to send the Worgen back, however. The Worgen were a deadly weapon, true, but not innately evil. They simply needed to be better directed. After all, is the arrow blamed for the archer's miss?

The warning that Odo gave to Arugal, however, was more dire than expected. The Worgen were returning to the keep for reasons unknown. When they arrived, Arugal must keep them outside the walls. The baron and his commander of the guards intended to destroy them by any means necessary. Odo spoke of a vision of the keep bathed in blood. If the Worgen were allowed inside the keep, there would be a slaughter.

On that day, when the horn sounded, Arugal did not bother to attempt to wend his way through the throng that filled the bailey. He simply raised his arms above his head and clapped them once. In the space of a heartbeat, he vanished from the arcades, and reappeared atop the battlements overlooking the gatehouse.

Silverlaine was there. The baron had originally embraced Arugal's presence, and had appointed him "Resident Archmage." The last few weeks, however, had worn down both the Baron's spirit and his opinion of Arugal. This morning he looked disheveled, his unshaven face greasy with breakfast, his usually formal attire replaced with an old dining jacket and trousers from a younger, and leaner age. He wore a nobleman's sword at his side; that is, a blade of the highest quality that had only ever been drawn to impress a woman.

Of course, Andrew Springvale stood beside the Baron. He had come to the keep years ago to serve as the commander of the guards, following distinguished service to Lordaeron in the Second War. Springvale had a typically military bearing and attitude. His armor was ever polished and well-maintained, his back straight and stomach trim despite the gray streaks in his beard and wrinkles around the eyes. The Commander had a penchant for thoroughness and efficiency that Arugal greatly respected, but his distrust of nearly all forms of magic, and insistence on doing everything manually, vexed the archmage in equal measure.

The battlements were swarming with Springvale's soldiers. They scurried and jostled to find positions behind the merlons. Some of them were still buckling on pieces of armor, or sucking bacon grease from their fingertips. Arugal did have to give Springvale credit, however. Once word of the Scourge hit, the Commander rapidly increased the size of the keep's guards twofold. Thanks to the keep's naturally defensible position, and Arugal's Worgen, the soldiers had not crossed swords with a real enemy in years. Despite this, Springvale drilled and exercised them daily, and they had responded to the call to arms adequately enough.

"Arugal!" called the baron, stepping over to where the archmage had appeared, "Damn it man, about time!" Springvale and several others trailed behind.

Arugal inclined his head. "My lord." His gaze moved to the Commander. "Andrew. Getting them up rather early, don't you think? They won't be able to fight on an empty stomach."

"Well I'm glad you find this amusing," said the Baron. "I'd like to hear your plan for putting the muzzle back on those dogs of yours."

"They're not dogs," Arugal said. He had long since grown tired of the common, but wildly inaccurate comparison. "They do not need muzzles." He gestured at the line of soldiers who were readying their bows. "And this is utterly unnecessary. The Worgen are simply returning home."

"This keep is not their home," the Baron responded angrily, "they are murderous creatures and they need to be sent back to their _real_ home." Then he added, "Or sent to Hell."

"Those so-called murderous creatures have kept the Scourge away from your doorstep for weeks," Arugal countered angrily, "I spent months researching the spells necessary to summon them, not to mention going to considerable personal expense. You should be thanking me."

A young woman, with long, honey-colored hair, pale skin, and sky blue eyes, stepped into view from amidst Commander Springvale and his retinue of lieutenants. She wore a magician's robe with the gaudy insignia of the Kirin Tor – a yellow eye on purple background. "If you hadn't been so absorbed in your research," she said icily, "perhaps you might have had time to come to the defense of Dalaran."

Arugal's jaw clenched. Although he was not pleased to hear of the fall of his former home (losing the extensive magical archives stored in the Dalaran library was such a shame after all), he was not sorry at all to hear of the demise of so many magicians who fought the Scourge onto their dying breath. The Kirin Tor – Dalaran's magician caste – had grown complacent over the years, valuing style over substance, and promoting the young and radical-minded into positions of authority. Dalaran had grown corrupt and decayed from within.

The young mage who stood before him, Fiona Thelendar, was a prime example. She was a member of the new generation of Dalaran's prominent wizards – young, attractive, over-confident and under-educated. Like her friend Jaina Proudmoore, the wunderkind of the Kirin Tor, Fiona strutted about the place as if she owned it, spending her time gossiping, socializing, and engaging in imprudent romances with other wizards, rather than training and studying. In these unworthy disciples did the wizards of Dalaran entrust their future, and now they had all paid the price.

"Fiona," Arugal acknowledged with a barely repressed sneer, "you are yet living. It must have been difficult for you to save your own skin while Dalaran burned."

"I helped with the evacuation," Fiona retorted, "at Antonidas' request. If you-"

"And left the fighting to the fully trained wizards," Arugal said, cutting her off. "Of course."

The mix of frustration and rage on her face was priceless. Arugal drank it in.

Any further debate between them ended when cries arose from the watchers along the battlements. While Springvale shouted orders and his lieutenants jogged to their positions, the remaining company looked out over the wall.

On the opposite side of the great ravine that protected the keep, an edifice of stone and metal had been built into the rock, reinforcing it to hold the weight of the drawbridge when lowered. Around this edifice were several small buildings, wood and stone, collectively referred to by the locals as the "Welcome Gate." The Welcome Gate served as the junction between the long road that wound its way from the village below, and the keep itself.

This "gate" did not serve a defensive purpose, other than the two foot tall stone wall that ran along the edge of the ravine, theoretically preventing the curious from coming dangerously close to the precipice. Instead, it was a checkpoint of sorts, where visitors would entreat the guards at the gate to grant them access to the keep. On busy market days, there would almost always be spillover, when the keep's bailey was overfull, and late arrivals would be forced to set up their tents and wagons surrounding the Welcome Gate, often giving it a festive appearance to rival the keep itself.

Beyond the Welcome Gate – now deserted of course – the road quickly disappeared into a line of trees and then down the hillside. It was the edge of the trees that now drew the attention from those that lined the battlements above, for something – many somethings – stirred within. Of course Arugal did not need a crystal ball to sense his own Worgen. When the first of them stepped out from the treeline, however, those collected around him let out a stifled gasp.

The first to emerge was their leader, Nandros. Like all Worgen, he walked with his shoulders forward, back bent, enabling him to lope adroitly on two legs, or go down to all fours to run. Even so, he towered over the others of his kind. He combined the raw strength of a bull with the agility of a fox, fueled by an unquenchable thirst for violence that no ogre, orc, or undead could match. Nandros, and his brethren, were dangerous weapons indeed.

Arugal smiled at the appearance of his favorite Worgen. It had been two months since he had released them into the wild, with explicit instructions to hunt down and destroy any undead they came across. It now seemed that Nandros, and indeed many of the others as well, had learned a thing or two from their skirmishes.

The Worgen chieftain had spliced together a crude suit of armor, the parts taken from his numerous victims. The heavy brown fur of his shoulders and arms were covered by leather and chainmail, with human skulls decorating front and back. Bracers of plate mail augmented with animal teeth adorned his wrists, which only served to draw extra attention to his powerful hands and razor-sharp claws. His chest was bare, but more chainmail stitched together with pieces of plate anchored around his waist and ran down his legs. To complete his fearsome armor, his lupine features had found their way into a helm made from the skull of a horned giant, with his snout and canine teeth showing prominently underneath. In all, it was the most ill-begotten armature Arugal had ever seen, and its barbarism lent Nandros' visage even greater ferocity.

In groups of twos and threes, the Worgen came to stand around their leader. Many had acquired the odd raiment or armor to mimic Nandros, but others were naked but for the thick fur that covered their bodies. Some even brandished clubs or spears.

Both Springvale and the Baron turned from the scene and approached Arugal, with the Kirin Tor wench in tow. "Well?" said the Baron, "We're waiting. Why don't you command them to find some more Scourge to kill?"

"It's not that simple," replied Arugal, "as you should well know. The Worgen are not from this world, they don't speak our language. They aren't hounds to be sent after a mark with a whistle and hand gesture."

"Well what about the tame one then?" replied Fiona, "Isn't that why you keep him chained up in your tower? So that he can tell the others what to do?" Her mixture of arrogance and ignorance had rapidly come to remind him of his wife's sister, a most unpleasant development.

"Odo is a seer," Arugal said. "Not the chieftain. They do not take orders from him."

"So you are saying you can not order them away at this moment," said the commander, in his typically businesslike demeanor. Arugal respected the paladin's ability to calmly reduce the situation to the basic facts, although to have them phrased thus irked him.

"They don't need to be sent away at the moment," Arugal countered. "The drawbridge is up, the keep is safe, even if the Worgen were of a mind to attack, they cannot reach us."

Springvale nodded, and stepped past Arugal, walking to where the battlements met the upper level of the gatehouse. Many of the bowmen left their posts and followed him. Arugal smirked, thinking he had convinced the commander to retreat into the keep. The baron and his new wizardling, on the other hand, did not acquiesce so easily.

"So that's it? You just plan to let them stay out there? For how long?" demanded the Baron.

"Only some of the people from the village made it up here," added Fiona. "Most of them fled into the hills, or are locked in their own cellars. What will you do if the Worgen tire of waiting out there and decide to hunt our own people?"

Arugal had enough disrespect from this pretentious upstart. "Our? Our?" he raged, drawing himself up and facing her fully. "This is not Dalaran. You have no place here. I am the Archmage of this keep, and I will keep my own counsel. Do not think your standing with the Kirin Tor will avail you here."

"If you are so worried about the village mensch," he added with a sneer, "why don't you go down there and get them yourself? I'm sure a wizard of your talent would be able to get them past the Worgen."

While Arugal's outburst had the intended effect on Fiona, causing her to shut her mouth and take a couple steps back, the Baron's cheeks flushed with anger and he raised a finger. "Now look here," he started to shout.

At that moment, however, the archmage's ears picked up an unexpected sound amid the general commotion and the ignored castigations of the baron. It was a loud, metallic squeal coming from the direction of the gatehouse. Arugal knew it well; he, and most inhabitants of Silverlaine Keep, heard it every morning. It was caused by a slight fault in the drawbridge chain, screeching as it passed through the pulley system.

"What?" cried Arugal, as he jumped forward to the edge of the wall and looked over. The drawbridge was nearly down. "What the hell are you doing?"

The Baron smirked and crossed his arms over his chest. "What we must," he said.

A loud thump heralded the touchdown of the far end of the drawbridge. Immediately, the Worgen, led by Nandros, went down to all fours and ran onto it, heading toward the gatehouse. Up above, a half-dozen bowmen were positioned on this side of the barbicans, and a half-dozen on the other side. Their bows were drawn, arrows knocked, trained on the Worgen.

"They're mine!" snarled Arugal, and he ran a dozen steps along the wall-walk to where the bowmen were lined up. "Ast kiralan tezad!" he intoned, holding his palms out toward the soldiers. Instantly the air was filled by a blast of frigid wind, vision obscured by snow, as if a window to some alien world had suddenly opened and let in a howling blizzard. The force of the air and cold struck the soldiers unawares. Five of them toppled down like dominoes, their skin suddenly chilled and armor caked with frost, while the one closest to the archmage, taking the full brunt of the spell while leaning too precariously over the merlons, toppled over the edge, and plummeted downward.

"Arugal, you villain!" cried the Baron. He turned to the handful of soldiers still standing by his side. "Arrest him!"

Arugal paid scant heed to the uncertain advance of the men-at-arms. Their fear and reluctance were so palpable he could almost taste it on the air. He looked over again at the drawbridge. Nandros and the first to cross were already in the gatehouse, with more piling in. Strangely, the bowmen positioned on the battlements on the other side of the gatehouse had not fired a single shot.

Suddenly, Arugal realized why so few bowmen were left on the walls. They were in the gatehouse instead. The archmage cursed himself for his own arrogance. He had been warned of a slaughter, and if he did not act quickly, a slaughter there would be. Springvale was herding the Worgen into the gatehouse, inner portcullis down, where they would be trapped. Then, the bowmen would fire through the murder holes from the upper level of the structure. It was a common defense mechanism of castles, although one that was usually employed as a last-ditch defense, not a trap.

His Worgen would be lost.

Looking back, Arugal saw that the soldiers, blades in hand, had finally approached. To their credit, they were hesitant but unafraid. A single gesture from Arugal, however, and they would be like their brothers-at-arms, who were moaning from aching joints and frostbitten noses, and still struggling to stand up. Or, perhaps, they could join the one at the bottom of the ravine.

Fiona, however, was with them. She stood behind, using them as a human shield, while she prepared her spells. She already had the telltale silver glimmer of a mana shield swirling about her person, which would likely ward off the first attack from Arugal. But not the second.

Arugal did not have time to give the whelp the beating she so richly deserved, however. It would have to wait. He grinned wickedly at her. "Patience," he purred, "I'll back in a moment." With that, he clapped his hands over his head, and was gone.

* * *

"Master," came the sound of a deep, almost metallic voice.

Arugal straightened from his position looking out over the balcony. The visions of the chaos within the keep on that fateful day vanished as he pulled his thoughts from the past to the present.

Turning, he saw one of his creatures, a shadowy voidwalker, approach. Voidwalkers, vaguely humanoid shaped demons eternally shrouded in a swirling miasma of black and violet, lacked much personality or imagination, but they had long memories, adequate problem-solving skills, and were strong of arm. Thus, they made excellent servants, messengers, and the like. Warlocks of modest means frequently used them as bodyguards, but Arugal knew there were better choices for that purpose.

"Report," commanded the Archmage.

"The Worgen have cornered two undead entering the keep," replied the demon, called Duurgint. "One has been severely damaged, the other placed in a holding cell in the galley to prevent it from being further injured."

"Bring them here," he ordered, but before the demon could bow and acknowledge, Arugal changed his mind. "No, never mind. I will go myself." Arugal did not trust that his prisoners would make it alive to his tower. The ever-violent Worgen might decide to tear them to shreds out of boredom instead.

Turning from the balcony, he walked back into the ruined top of the keep's tower. It had been designed and built to be a great library; the original architect of the keep had illustrious plans to make the keep a beacon of enlightenment and knowledge across the Eastern Kingdoms. However, such plans have an annoying habit of being scuttled by more mundane matters, such as war, finances, and the death of architects. Too remote to be used for day-to-day functions of the keep, too high to climb to be used as storage, the great room at the top of the tower sat largely neglected for most of the keep's history.

That made it perfect for Arugal's needs.

He called it his "Summons Room". At first, he intended to use the room as a site for performing experiments that required some degree of solitude and privacy. When he first started practicing necromancy and shadow magic, it was the perfect haven. Even his wife did not approach, vastly preferring their apartments far below. Once he was ready to attempt to summon the Worgen from their savage world, he chose this room to do it in. Despite every precaution, the energies released by opening the summoning portal caused the roof of the tower to collapse at several points.

Even now, the gaping holes in the stone roof of the tower remained unrepaired. As Arugal walked across the floor of the Summons Room, he felt the cool breeze invigorating him. He liked having the room partially open to the night sky. The roof was still sound; the points of collapse had occurred at structural weaknesses. Arugal found the remainder of the roof strong and intact. He had used the room many times since for further summons, most with considerably less energy released, but several with more.

Arugal strode into the chamber adjacent to the Summons Room. He called it the Kennel, and for very good reason. It was the lair of a small group of creatures that Arugal had summoned from the Worgen's homeworld. They had their own name for the creatures; on Azeroth, they would be called wolves. Not just any wolves, however.

Odo had said that his tribe had domesticated these wolves for centuries. They were bred not only for obedience to their master, but also for their size, strength, and viciousness – not unlike the Worgen themselves. There were two dozen of the beasts in the keep, and Arugal generally let them run wild.

One of the wolves, however, Arugal always kept close at hand.

The largest of the beasts that had answered his summons also appeared to be the most intelligent. This one Arugal named "Fenris" after the great mythical wolf of ancient lore. Fenris became one of the archmage's most successful early experiments into necromancy. Over a period of weeks, Arugal infused the great beast with shadow power. The creature swelled, literally and figuratively, growing to thrice the size of the others, fur blackening, eyes blazing with unholy radiance.

Onto this, Arugal added something more. While his research into a permanent solution to the vengeful spirits of the keep continued, Arugal needed a means to keep them away while he worked, while he went about the castle, and while he slept. Through his new knowledge of dark magic, Arugal had learned several wards of Forbiddance that would repel all hostile spirits, but these spells, being both complicated and new to him, were exhausting to perform. Considering the number of times he would be forced to use them, he would be utterly spent just going down to the kitchen and back.

So he inscribed the wards on Fenris, instead. It was a sublime solution. Such a scheme would never work on an earthly creature – the ward would be as temporary as if Arugal had drawn it in the air. However, on a creature suffused with shadow power, the runes and sigils that created the wards could draw upon that power, maintaining them indefinitely. Thus, scattered across Fenris' body were shaved patches with incandescent symbols, fiery red, from the top of his forehead to his haunches. His glossy black fur did not regrow over the symbols, giving him a look both feral and otherworldly.

Arugal whistled to his pet. "Fenris," he called, "time for your walk."

The beast, despite having had his body and soul so mutated at the hands of the Archmage, leapt immediately to its feet and padded right over to Arugal. It growled softly, almost a throaty rumble – a sign of affection and greeting that Arugal knew well.

The archmage scratched the top of the beast's head, and then set off down the tower steps toward the bailey, unafraid of the ghosts that haunted it.


	8. Chapter 6

_Chapter Six_

**Testing Our Mettle**

"So, you're an apprentice," I said conversationally, "to a warlock."

"His name is Zargath," Katrina said.

"Yes. He's a warlock," I repeated. "and an orc."

"So?"

We had left the inn, following along a road heading out of town, trailing twenty paces behind the red-robed, bespectacled master warlock. He was discussing the parameters of whatever mission we were supposed to undertake with another of the Forsaken, a Risen named Zygand. From the occasional irate gestures he made, Zargath, it seemed, did not agree entirely with what the Risen was proposing.

"So he's an orc," I persisted in a hushed tone of voice, lest we be overheard. "Is  
Lordaeron no longer a member of the Grand Alliance? Since when do we allow orcs to walk  
unmonitored through our lands?"

"Sorin, Lordaeron belongs to the Forsaken," Katrina responded, "and the Forsaken have  
joined with the Horde. Humans are the enemy now."

I smiled halfheartedly, even though I did not find her joke particularly funny, not under present circumstances. Then I saw the serious expression on her face.

"You aren't joking." It was a half-question, half-statement.

"What were you expecting?" she replied. "We're undead now. The humans see no difference  
between us and the Scourge. If they had their way, we would all be burned and our ashes buried. It's a simple matter of survival."

"What about our friends, our family?" I demanded, despite the fact that I still wasn't able to recall if I had many of those. "Surely you don't think they would hate us for being stricken with this.. disease. After all, there must be a cure, at least for those of us... who..."

Just then we passed by one of the last buildings along the road. It had once been a stable, but most of it was burnt down, leaving only a single, dilapidated stall covered by the crumbling remnants of a shingle roof. A Forsaken man stood in front of the stall, certainly Plagueborn, shoveling a pile of mud and squalid refuse into the open space. He was using a pitchfork with only one tine left. He was sound of arm and leg, but his chest cavity had suffered some kind of horrid trauma prior to his reawakening, leaving him with a gaping hole that exposed most of his midsection, from the top of his pelvis up into the lower reaches of his ribcage. Only the spinal column remained, and how it could support the weight of his torso I couldn't fathom.

The man paid us no heed, and I doubted that he would have cared, or even understood, why I was staring at him.

We walked in silence after that.

Ten minutes north of town, we came to an intersection of sorts. The road we were on continued for miles to the north, eventually reaching the ocean. Another fork headed northwest, to a collection of farmsteads. The dense, sickly woods of the Tirisfal glades closed in around us, and the roads narrowed to sparsely-used tracks through the trees, not unlike the one I first encountered. Night had fallen, and with it, the ever-present mists of the glades.

A warm light penetrated the gloom ahead of us, and we approached a camp that had been erected in a small clearing adjacent to the intersection. A fire provided the warmth, and its flickering light illuminated a trio of figures sitting on fallen logs that had been arranged around it.

The first was familiar to me. He was the troll with the strange blue markings on his tusks and chest who I had seen briefly in the Gallows' End tavern back in Brill. Katrina had told me he was a mage, and his name was Benu'jina. Apparently he had managed to reach the camp well ahead of us, for he reclined leisurely against the trunk of a tree close to the fire, studying a large tome. He whistled some unfamiliar tune to himself and barely looked up as we approached the camp.

The other two I knew only from stories.

They were Tauren, imposing humanoids with the fur and facial features reminiscent of a bull. They were the inspiration for the mythical creature known as the Minotaur who would hunt down disobedient little children who got lost in the marketplace. The Tauren, however, were very much real. They hailed from across the ocean, where they had formed a bond of friendship with the orcs. They were rarely seen, and never welcome, in Lordaeron – the Lordaeron from _before_, that is.

One of the Tauren, a female, stood some seven feet tall, and wore something that resembled a thick leather tunic with a long kilt. Both tunic and kilt, as well as matching leather bracers and boots, were decorated with stripes of paint in earth-tones and a myriad of multicolored feathers and beads. Her fur was tan, with patches of white on her arms and neck. She had dainty horns atop her head, lustrous black hair in a single braid down her back, and shrewd, green eyes that seemed oddly out of place amid her bovine features.

As both of them rose to greet us, I was stunned to see that her companion towered over her. Easily eight feet tall, he possessed shoulders and chest that would have made ogres jealous. He wore little armor, but I could see instantly that he was a warrior. A leather harness complete with jagged animal teeth of different sizes ran across his shoulders to his waist, tying to a thick studded leather belt. His legs were covered in mail, made up of thick black scales; what beast such scales originally belonged to, I couldn't say. A wicked warhammer hung at his belt.

Katrina gestured to the female. "Moonborn," she said, "I'd like you to meet-"

Zargath cut her off and silenced her with a look. "Introductions later," he said. "The Empress of Lordaeron has asked us to perform a task prior to our departure." Although Zargath did not look pleased by the pronouncement, he turned and gestured to the new Forsaken. "This is Executor Zygand."

Zygand, a bald-headed Risen dressed head to toe in supple black leather, with an alarming number of knives and daggers decorating his person, had a gravelly voice not unlike Dark Cleric Beryl's. It seemed to be a common feature of the undead. "A Forsaken reconnaissance patrol was ambushed not far to the west. I believe that it is the work of the local resistance who may be in league with Scarlet Crusade. My men are spread out across Tirisfal, so I asked Her Dark Majesty to grant me use of your party. You will do me this favor, a... test of your mettle, so to speak. I shall give a very favorable report of your success to the Undercity."

With that, Zygand abruptly saluted the group, spun on his heels, and walked briskly back in the direction of Brill. In a few moments he was lost in the gloom.

Benu'jina, neither moving nor lifting his eyes from his book, said in a soft but clear voice, "Well, dis be a waste. Doin' `a favor` mean we workin' dirty for free."

Zargath seemed to share the sentiment, if not the troll's even tone. His voice was the hiss of a serpent. "He curries favor and we delay."

"I trust those who need to rest have done so," Zargath continued. "A fast march. We'll rest before daybreak." Then, he turned to face me.

I was surprised to discover I actually stood a couple inches taller than the orc. The illusion created by his slender build, small eyes and wiry spectacles – that of a timid academic – was instantly dispelled by his venomous voice and disconcerting stare. "And you, woodsman. You'd better fight well, track well, and not get in the way. I wont hesitate to let the Scarlets have you." He cast a glare at Katrina, who shrank back, and then abruptly set off on the road to the northwest. He didn't look back.

The remainder of the party scrambled to grab their things, douse the fire, and catch up with the fast-walking orc. Introductions would have to be done on the road.

We marched briskly along the track. It wound its way through the trees, skirting hillsides where the mists and the foliage were so dense that the actual slope was impossible to see. From time to time we heard unfamiliar howls, or the screeching of some unknown bird, but we encountered none. Nor did we run afoul of any of the Scourge, or anything else for that matter.

Katrina and I walked side by side, mostly in silence, trailing Zargath by a dozen paces. He neither looked back, nor slacked his stride. The others followed behind us.

"Tracker, huh?" I said with a sidelong glance at Katrina.

She shrugged, giving me a half-smile. "You used to know these woods pretty well," she said.

"I don't recognize any of this," I replied. "And I don't recall ever being able to track anything."

Katrina shot me a glance, inclining her head toward Zargath, and raised a finger to her lips. Then, she slowed her pace and turned back to the two Tauren who marched behind us. Benu'jina, studying a book as he walked (an impressive feat in itself, given the dense wood and number of tree branches that overhung the road), trailed behind us.

"Sorin," she said softly, "I never got to finish introducing you." Still walking, she indicated the smaller of the two. "This is Moonborn. She and her brother were sent to us all the way from Orgrimmar." Katrina beamed. "Moonborn, this is my old friend, Sorin."

The one called Moonborn bowed her head slightly, eyes remaining on me. "The Earthmother smiles upon our first meeting," she said. Her facial expressions were hard to decipher, but her eyes appraised me not unkindly.

Katrina pointed to the larger of the two, obviously a male. "And this big guy is named Lakota... something," she said. With a glance, she appealed for elaboration from the big Tauren. His only response was to adjust his enormous backpack and give her a stare that looked like a half-scowl, half-grimace.

"Lakota'mani" Moonborn clarified.

"It means 'Snakestomper' in Taurhe – their native language. I've tried learning some," Katrina said with a sheepish grin, "It's hard."

I turned to Moonborn. "What do they call you in Taurhe?"

"Oba' Cha'i'ieya Te'i Ekana," she replied.

I blinked. "Oba' Cha-" I started to repeat, but I knew I would just horribly butcher the name, so I stopped.

"It means 'Born Under a Shining Moon'"

I nodded. "Moonborn is a fine name," I said, almost apologetically. "It suits you well, and... it's a bit easier to pronounce."

Moonborn inclined her head again and her mouth split into a smile. The way Tauren smile struck me as odd at first, but soon I came to find the gesture very comforting. "Taurhe is very hard to learn for most," she said. "My people have always taken orcish names when speaking with others."

"Orcish?" I asked, puzzled.

Moonborn's ears twitched. "Yes – isn't that what you call it? The language of the orcs."

"But we're speaking-" I started to say, but the next word – "Arathic" – stuck in my throat. Arathic, or "Common" as most people called it, was the language used throughout the human world, from Stormwind all the way to Andorhal. Aside from a little dwarven and a few phrases in High Elven, it was the only language I knew.

With a sudden shock, I realized we weren't speaking Common at all. I stopped dead in the road. The others paused and looked back at me.

The Tauren wore expressions of confusion, but Katrina only chuckled as she finished my sentence. "Orcish." The look on my face must have betrayed the mixture of distress and surprise I was feeling. I couldn't even remember the Common word for "hello." Just one more thing that was horribly out of place in this incongruous dream-scape.

Katrina stepped forward, bemused look gone, and took my hand. "It's okay Sorin, really. You get used to it. It's very useful to be able to speak orcish, not all the Forsaken can. Besides, you'll remember how to speak Common again, it comes back."

"I've never learned a word of orcish in my life," I said. Now that I was conscious of it, the words came out sounding twisted, muffled, as if my mouth was stuffed with nails and cotton. I struggled for a moment trying to find where Common was hidden in my brain. Resigning that search, I added, "How on Azeroth can I speak a language I've never learned?"

"Necromancers are able to program their creations with certain abilities and skills," Katrina replied. "Usually it's just basic commands and stuff. The more powerful the necromancer, the more that they can program their creations to know." She waved one hand in the general direction of her Mindrune. "Obviously, our benefactor spoke orcish."

"Benefactor?" I said dubiously.

"Hey! Dis not be social hour," said a voice from behind me, as Benu'jina caught up with us, book still in hand. "Orky-lock gonna be da mighty bee if we not catch up, mon." With that, he clicked his teeth a couple times, and suddenly vanished. We heard his laughter drifting back to us from somewhere further up the trail.

The four of us ran to catch up.

We marched until daybreak. As usual, the sun rose without fanfare. There was no bright morning sky, no swirl of pink and orange amidst the clouds, no dazzling shafts of light. Instead, there was a gradual change from darkness to greyness. The mist retreated, but only to a point, always remaining in the distance, cloaked around the trees and the bushes. The heavy blanket of haze sat just atop the boughs, poised to collapse upon us at dusk once again.

Zargath called a halt to the march. "Rest here," he said. As the party began to relax and look for places to sit, he held up a warning hand. "No fire until I have scouted the area. There may be humans nearby."

So saying, Zargath found a clear patch of ground and knelt. He withdrew from his robes a dagger of a dusky gray metal, plain except for a scarlet stone mounted on the pommel. This, he drove into the ground with a grunt, burying it almost to the hilt. As he did, the stone began to glow, as if a fire had been lit from within. Then, suddenly, an eerie fog, the color of blood, began to spill forth from the stone.

I recalled once seeing an alchemist in my old life who could pour water and turn it into tiny clouds of white fog which clung to the ground before dissipating. The red fog emanating from the stone on the dagger seemed alive as it crawled over, and around, the kneeling warlock, seeping slowly over the ground until it made an unnaturally symmetrical circle around his person.

Suddenly, the fog sank into the ground all around him and disappeared. Where the fog had been, there were now faintly glowing lines and runes in the same color. Somewhere, I'd seen such a shape before. It was a summoning circle.

Carefully, Zargath removed his glasses and set them on the ground in front of him. He then brought forth another object from a belt pouch. This one was a small, copper tube, the size of a large nail, one end tapered to a point. He held it up, and began rocking back and forth gently while chanting in some obscure language. Then, to a muffled chorus of gasps, he abruptly jammed the pointed object straight through one of his eyes, right into his own head.

Only Katrina seemed unfazed by the startling violence of the warlock's self-mutilation. She leaned over to me, admiring gaze on her master. "Kilrogg's Eye," she whispered. "Watch."

Rapidly, an unnatural lime-green gas began to pour out of the end of the copper tube. It spiraled into a swirling ball as it did, becoming larger and larger until it was the size of a person's head. As it grew, the warlock's own eye diminished, deflating like a spent balloon, until there was nothing left but the tube jammed into the back of an empty eye socket.

The green sphere began to move in midair. It rotated slightly, and a darker circle on one side of the sphere came into view. It did, indeed, look like an eye, complete with black pupil at the center of the iris-like circle. Then, as if a dark shadow had passed over it, the fluorescent green color dimmed until it was a translucent, murky gray, making it hard to see, even right in front of us. With that, the sphere darted away, flying up into the boughs of the trees, dodging and weaving between branches, until it had disappeared.

Gabnip shimmered into view, standing on the ground, leaning up against a tree, gazing at the orc still unmoving inside his summoning circle. "Ahh," he sighed in a melancholy voice, "Kilrogg's eye. One of master Scyrratic's favorites. Boy, those were the days..."

Gabnip, still reminiscing, took a couple leisurely steps toward the summoning circle. "I remember once, in Felwood-" he continued in a dreamy voice, but suddenly stopped. Another figure shimmered into view, between Zargath and Gabnip. It was an imp.

This one was larger and thicker than Gabnip, although proportioned much the same. Its skin and scales, when not transparent, were a smoky black color. In contrast to Gabnip, whose face was all nose and ears, this one had almost no nose at all adorning its flat, blocky features.

"Back off," it said, in a calm, but menacing voice much like its master.

"Master Xaknif," Gabnip said, all hand-waving and apologies as he retreated, "I'm ever so sorry. Of course you're protecting your master's circle, and why not? A good imp should always protect their master, you should be commended..." He kept on mumbling obsequiously, bowing, backing away, but the other imp paid him no further mind.

Gabnip moved in the direction of his own mistress, disappearing as he did. "Arrogant prick," I heard him mumble as he passed by me.

Katrina and Benu'jina had already found comfortable spots to rest. Benu'jina had his long nose in the same book he'd seemingly been reading continuously since we started, while Katrina studied some kind of scroll that she'd produced from a pocket of her robes. Snakestomper busied himself building a lean-to of sorts using implements from his pack.

Suddenly, after all the whirlwind of activity in the last day, I felt at loose ends. I noticed that Moonborn was kneeling some distance away from the rest of the party. Curious, hoping she was not sick or hurt, I quietly circled around until I could see what she was doing.

She had constructed a tiny shrine from the contents of one of her belt pouches. There was a lit candle balanced on a flat rock, and several odds and ends placed around it. I stepped a little closer to see what they were.

"You're not interrupting," she said, without turning her head to me. "The Earthmother hears all prayers."

I knelt next to her. "You're praying? For success on the mission?" I imagined a great chapel in my mind, dedicated to the Holy Light, with towering windows of colored glass, adorned by the spoils of generations of crusades, and scores of the faithful kneeling in supplication. It didn't seem to fit in the gloom of the woods.

She kept her head down and eyes closed. "The Earthmother does not take sides in mortal affairs such as this."

"Then what are you praying for?"

"Guidance," she said. "I pray for the wisdom to choose the right path for myself and my people, the courage to walk that path, and I beseech the spirits that I may call upon their aid when we are in need."

"Spirits?"

"The purest essence of all things," she explained, "is Spirit. Spirits are all around us, in the air, in the water, the trees, the animals. They will lend us their strength, if we know how to ask them."

I must have been feeling a bit sorry for myself just then. "Spirit..." I mumbled, "I seem to have lost mine somewhere..."

Inclining her head toward me, she laughed – a rich, hearty sound, without a trace of malice. "You might be surprised..."

I pointed to the collection of objects in front of her. "What are those?"

Moonborn held up a handful of small wooden figurines. "Greatmother," she said, indicating one, "and Greatfather. They are both with the Earthmother now, but I hear their voices in my dreams, and I thank them in my prayers." She held up another. "My little sister. She is ever a capricious child, getting in trouble, getting lost..." She held up the last. "Lakota. I pray the spirits show him the path to Quiet-on-the-Inside."

I smiled. The big Tauren hadn't done more than glare at me and grunt since we met. I had a hard time imagining him being _more_ quiet. "What about the other three?" I asked.

She held up the first one. It was a small polished rock, six inches long, as thin as a slender stick. Remarkably, it seemed to be two distinct stones that swirled together, one as black as obsidian, the other white like opal. "This is `Atuho Anaho`. It means..." Her brows knit for a moment working out the translation, then she grinned sheepishly. "It means `Earth Stone`. Not a very good name in Orcish I suppose."

The second was about the same size, but where the Earth Stone was smooth, this one was covered in a kinetic swirl of etchings. I did not recognize the stone at all. At first glance I thought it was a garnet, for it had a ruddy hue. When held up, however, even the faintest muted starlight that penetrated the gloom would sparkle across the surface, and a golden light deep inside the stone flickered in response. "Pyrestone," she said, answering my unspoken question. "I call it `Chuha Eha'i' Lakota" – `Fire Serpent's Scale`"

The final object looked so much like a thick icicle that I involuntarily reached out to touch it. Moonborn didn't object; I stroked the plain surface with a finger. It was cool, smooth, and felt wet, yet there was no moisture. There was the beginnings of a wave carved onto one end. "Hydrasite," she explained, "Handed down from Greatfather." She held it lovingly. "When I am finished, I shall present it to the Spirits of Water for their blessing."

I was genuinely impressed. "They're beautiful," I said. "But... what are they?"

"They are my totems."

"I thought totems were huge," I objected, trying to recall what I knew of the shamanistic objects. "Giant statues or faces carved into trees, that kind of thing."

"A totem can be anything," Moonborn replied. "There are totems in my village that stand thirty feet high and take four Tauren hand-in-hand to encircle. The size does not matter. They are talismans – symbols of faith, of remembrance, of courage. They are sacred to some and meaningless to others. These," she added, "I have crafted to honor the Earthmother and the spirits."

We knelt quietly for several minutes. Moonborn lowered her head, eyes closed, breath steady, with a calm smile on her face. I watched her reverently gather together her little shrine and place the objects into a belt pouch. It was hard not to feel a little jealous. Everything about Moonborn bespoke confidence, serenity, and peace with the world and everything in it. I felt the opposite.

We returned in silence back to the camp, where a robust fire blazed away within a small ring of rocks. Obviously Zargath's eerie green eye did not detect any threats. Snakestomper already lay snoring under his makeshift lean-to, and Benu'jina sat cross-legged upon a fallen log, engrossed in his book. Of Zargath and Katrina, there was no sign.

Benu'jina did not look up. "Dey out dere, somewhere. Trainin'" he said. I was starting to think he had a hidden third eye, or at the very least, could read minds.

Snakestomper had constructed a second lean-to next to his, and Moonborn silently stretched out underneath it, and soon was asleep. I sat on the ground next to the fire, occasionally tending it, while minutes stretched into an hour, then two. As before, I felt like I ought to sleep, but of course it never came.

I closed my eyes and bittersweet visions of my wife and child came to me. Annika and Callie – it was comforting to give them names, even if names were all I had. Instead of struggling to connect the images, I simply let them come and go, breathing deeply and evenly. It felt good.

I was startled by the sudden reappearance of Katrina. She staggered from the shadows and underbrush into the halo of firelight. Her face was even paler than normal, chest heaving, her arms and legs trembling visibly. Perhaps most alarming, the rune on her head was so dim it was barely visible. The Tauren both woke and were on their feet before I could gather my wits. Had they not jumped up just then to steady her, Katrina would have stumbled headlong into the fire.

I rushed to help, and we gently lowered Katrina to resting.

"Katrina, what happened? Where is Zargath? Were you attacked?" I looked about apprehensively, but the woods beyond the circle of firelight were still.

"Nothing," she mumbled, subdued and exhausted, "I'm fine."

I looked at the others, expecting to see the same alarm in their faces, but sensed only resignation. Katrina's condition didn't surprise anyone but myself, it seemed.

Moonborn was kneeling beside her opposite me. Gently, she lowered the back of Katrina's robe down off her shoulders. She took in a sharp breath. "Oh Katrina," she murmured, "this is worse than before." She moved one hand to the pouches at her belt. "Please, let me help you."

Katrina's Mindrune flared slightly just then, and she turned, staying Moonborn's hand with a tight grip. "No!" she said with as much force as she could muster. "You mustn't. I can handle it." Her grip loosened, and she slid forward, still shaking, to lie prone next to the fire. "I'm Forsaken," she added. "I can handle it... I can handle it."

That was when I saw what distressed Moonborn so. Katrina's robe had been pulled back to show the top of her shoulders. Her alabaster skin, from the neck down, had turned to the color of dusk. It was lacerated by a dozen wide, deep cuts, as if she had been brutally whipped. In places along her spine, tips of the vertebral bones poked out from the flayed and bloody skin.

I stared horrified for a long moment, then rose to my feet. "The orc," I growled, as my fists clenched.

Katrina lifted her head and shook it weakly. "No, Sorin," she said, "My master didn't do this to me... I did it to myself."

For a moment I thought I hadn't heard her correctly. The looks on the others' faces told me that this, too, did not come as a surprise.

"Most every night like dis," Benu'jina said. "Warlocks be like da crazy."

As Katrina lay collapsed on the ground beside the blaze, my eyes moved to an object that her trembling hand released. It was a short handle made of bone, attached to which were half a dozen slender leather straps, two feet long, studded every couple inches by razor sharp shards of jet black crystal.

I bent forward to pick it up, but her hand and arm quickly cradled it, and drew it in next to her. "No," she murmured weakly, "you can't touch it."

It was several minutes before the telltale blue glimmer finally lit within her body, and her wounds were very slow to heal. Katrina slept.

I spent the next several hours keeping watch while the others rested. I was tempted once to try to rouse Katrina, for the undead at rest are indistinguishable from corpses. Katrina's breathing, unnaturally slow to begin with, was undetectable. My worry abated when I saw the wounds in her back did eventually close, and her runes gradually regained their vitality.

Zargath returned before noon. He said nothing to me; if he felt any guilt about the suffering his "training" had caused to Katrina, he gave no indication. Behind his spectacles, his eyes bore no sign of the trauma he had inflicted upon himself. He kicked out what remained of the fire, and the others woke rapidly. In short order, with not a single word spoken, camp was broken and we were marching again.

This time we stayed close together, and there was no conversation. Zargath indicated that we were only a few hours walk from our destination. Gabnip and Xaknif, staying invisible, scouted ahead on the road.

I wanted to ask about Katrina's horrid wounds, but she kept her eyes down in uncharacteristic silence. Her demeanor solicited neither curiosity nor concern.

Eventually, Zargath called a halt to the march. The road had widened slightly, with more evidence of recent use. Not much about our surroundings had changed, but in the hazy distance, through the underbrush, I saw a clearing, although I could make out no details beyond.

"Protect me," Zargath commanded, and then once more, he performed the Kilrogg's Eye ritual. The swirling green sphere again dimmed to a translucent gray and spun away through the trees, this time staying low to the ground, as the orc sat inside his blood-red circle.

Katrina grinned, apparently fully recovered from her prior trauma. "This is where the fun begins!"

I gripped my spear, standing amid the underbrush at the side of the road, cocking my head to see through the gloom where the magic eye had gone. The Tauren flanked the chanting warlock, Moonborn holding a short wooden cudgel, while Snakestomper produced a wooden shield from his backpack to go along with his menacing warhammer.

Benu'jina, meanwhile, sat cross-legged in the middle of the road, a few steps back in the direction we came, playing a game on the ground with several red and white marbles. He let out a sigh. "Lemme know when somethin' interestin' happens," he mumbled in a bored tone.

Something interesting indeed happened. A dozen humans, coming from the direction of the very settlement Zargath was spying on, stumbled right into us.

Gabnip saw them first, from his perch in a tree a short distance up the road. He shimmered into view, eyes wide, one arm waving madly, one hand clamped over his own mouth as if he feared that he would bellow the news at the top of his lungs. He scampered to his mistress.

We did not need to hear his report to know trouble was imminent. Xaknif appeared next to his master's summoning circle, but Zargath did not immediately wake. I gave a meaningful look at Katrina and pointed in the orc's direction, but Katrina, eyes wide, shook her head. Apparently, it was neither simple, nor instantaneous, to end his spell.

The first of the men came into view, and then stopped abruptly. Dressed in chainmail, with a long, red surcoat, he carried a small, round buckler shield on one arm. The other arm went for his sword.

"Horde!" he cried, and suddenly the road burst into a frenzy of activity.

The men with him were less formally attired, most wearing commoner's garb – fleece jackets, thick linen, leather boots. Several wore overcoats with the same scarlet colored pattern. They were armed mostly with swords and daggers, although more than one carried only a sharpened pitchfork. Upon their leader's cry, however, they responded quickly, spreading out and rushing forward to engage us.

"Let's get outta here!" cried Gabnip, as he scrambled up Katrina's robe like it was the last tree standing amid a flash flood.

Zargath was the closest to our attackers. He remained in his circle, still chanting softly and rocking back and forth, showing no sign that the spell was ending, or that he had any awareness of his own peril. Even as I readied my spear and stepped forward, I knew there would be no saving the helpless orc. The humans saw his vulnerability at once, and two of them stepped forward to end him.

A sudden ursine roar thundered from behind me, and before I could even turn to look, Snakestomper charged past, hammer held high, rushing directly into our enemies' midst. His fierce expression and angry bellow struck as hard as his hammer, and several of them fell back before him.

Katrina grabbed Gabnip, prying him off her like a scared toddler from its mother, and flung him in the direction of Xaknif. The imp hit the ground in a tumble of limbs and tail, but found his feet in an instant. "Protect master Zargath!" she ordered. Gabnip, glaring petulantly at his mistress, reluctantly moved forward to join his fellow.

Katrina then held her hands up before her as if in supplication to some dark god. The skin of her face suddenly darkened, like a shadow had passed over her, and the glow of her eyes flared purple. Both hands suddenly burst into flame, like giant candle wicks, flickering madly in the breeze. At that same moment, one of the attackers closest to her master, whose grandfatherly face and weathered beard seemed at odds with the sharp blade he held, suddenly glowed from head to toe like an ember. The man stopped his advance, eyes widened in alarm, and looked down at his free hand. A heartbeat later, his clothes, hair, and beard burst into flame, as if he was drenched in oil and touched by a spark. He wailed in agony, cried out for help, and stumbled headlong into the underbrush.

Our attackers spread out, seeking to flank us. Snakestomper stood in front of Zargath, keeping a handful of them busy on his own, constantly moving in a furious kinetic storm of hammer blows. Most of his swings missed their mark; he seemed more intent for the moment on keeping them at bay. Moonborn positioned herself at the orc's back, cudgel in one hand, and flanked by the two imps.

As their leader shouted orders, a handful of the humans circled around the two Tauren. I steeled myself, stepping in front of Katrina, spear raised, as three of them came at us. I tried not to look at their faces as they approached, for fear I might recognize one. Despite their grim determination and blades in their hands, these men were not killers. They were farmers, husbands, neighbors.

Two moved shoulder-to-shoulder, raising their blades to strike at me. Instinctively, I stepped to the side, swinging the shaft of my spear vertically, and managed to catch both sword-arms. The parry did little to injure them, but put me in a good position to counter attack. My spear whirled as I raised the butt and swung it hard into the midsection of my nearest attacker. I heard ribs crack; he groaned in pain and dropped to one knee.

I realized too late that the third attacker had a clean shot at Katrina. He stepped past the other two as we fought. He carried a short spear, not unlike my own. He leveled the blade at her, but just as he was about to step forward, he suddenly jerked his head back and lurched to the side.

Benu'jina, apparently deciding that our combat was sufficiently diverting, had run up from behind us. He threw a handful of his marbles into the face of Katrina's assailant, causing the distraction. That was sufficient for Katrina, whose hands, no longer afire, reached out toward the man, her fingers splayed. "Nom sari akahn!" she cried, "Adju akahn!"

His expression suddenly contorted in pain as tiny black spots, like soot, appeared on his face and the exposed skin of his arms. The spots expanded into great blotches, and the skin smoked and blistered.

The man snarled viciously, enraged by his pain, and thrust forward with his spear. The weapon found its mark, cutting through Katrina's robes, piercing her side, just above her hips. As his spear hit home, however, Benu'jina let loose a cry, and one of the marbles he had thrown a moment before suddenly burst into a blinding flash of light and flame, knocking every one of us, human and forsaken alike, backwards.

Skin and eyes burning, momentarily dazed, I found myself on my back in the bushes at the side of the road. Next to me, just as dazed, lay one of our assailants. In the background, I heard the ongoing din of battle, with Zargath's voice now rising above it all, shouting orders to his team. The one beside me struggled to sit up, and then our eyes met. I realized with a start it was not a man at all. It was a young woman, probably eighteen, with brown curly hair cropped short, and the eyes of a child forced to grow up far too quickly. I was thankful I did not recognize her.

Then her eyes filled with ferocity mixed with desperation, and she raised a dagger in one hand. She jumped on top of me, and plunged the blade down toward my heart, yelling words I didn't recognize. I grabbed her wrist as it came down, and we struggled for a moment, but she was no match for the strength of a Risen. I pushed away the weapon, even as I grabbed her hair in my other hand. In one fluid motion, I rolled away, and yanked her head, dragging her across my body, and flung her into a thick fern.

"Hold her," I ordered the plant.

Instantly, the bush came alive, its leaves and tendrils reaching out and wrapping around her arms and waist. The edges of the plant curled around and hardened, becoming tiny sharp knives. As she thrashed about wildly, thin cuts appeared all over her face and arms. As I regained my feet, she doubled her efforts, kicking, arching her back. The leaves of the plant, even hardened as they were by the magic I somehow exerted over it, began to snap and tear.

I turned to a pair of young trees, barely more than saplings, standing nearby. "Don't let her up," I said. Swiftly, they bent forward, wrapping her anew in their slender branches.

Turning back to the rest of the melee, I saw that the tide had turned decidedly in our favor once Zargath had awoken. The road was scattered by the bodies of the dead. Several lay sprawled where Snakestomper had been, their skulls and ribs mashed in by his mighty hammer. Many were hideously burnt, or lay in twisted heaps, their skin blistered and blackened. A number of them met their end in the underbrush that flanked the road, obviously trying to flee.

Moonborn tended to her brother, whose chest still heaved, fur and shield spattered by blood, some of which must have been his. Zargath walked slowly from one body to the next, kicking them with his boot. Gabnip bounced back and forth, tiny fires playing about his hands and shoulders, as he made excited little noises.

Nearby, Katrina held the spear that had belonged to one of her attackers, whose body lay crumpled at her feet, his face blackened, while his lower half had been badly burned. Tiny flames played along the edges of his linen underclothes. His back arched slowly, his chest shuddered, and he groaned faintly.

Katrina stepped forward, raised the spear, and thrust it down into his scorched chest. I flinched. "That's for putting a hole in my new robe, human," she sneered.

Benu'jina stepped near and put a hand on my shoulder. "Sorry, mon," he said, slightly embarrassed, "choo got bit too close, ya know?" Then he grinned. "Big kaboom, doh, eh? Good one..."

Katrina approached the young woman, who still struggled vainly, wrapped up in leaves and branches. "You'll die nie maia eh!" cried the woman, spitting at us, "Bastards!" I realized she was speaking Arathic. Her accent – which certainly was commonplace in Tirisfal – sounded so obscure in my ears, I could only pick out certain words.

"Awww," Katrina grinned, "She's so cute. Too bad we can't keep her – as a pet." She raised her hands, and the woman shrank back, her courage evaporating.

I gripped Katrina's wrist. "No," I said, "They're beaten. She doesn't need to die."

Katrina gave me an accusing look. "We can't let her live, either. She might-"

Suddenly, I heard the sound of twigs snapping, and we both looked up into the bushes. Fifteen feet off the road, hiding behind a tree, was a young man. His gaze met ours for a heartbeat, and then he sprinted away.

"Catch him!" Katrina urged. Our prisoner forgotten, she dashed into the undergrowth.

Heedless of the danger, I dashed in after her.


	9. Chapter 7

_Chapter Seven_

**Tainted**

"Tell me!" Arugal growled.

He clamped down the Torturous Vise even further. Vincent shuddered, his arms and legs quivering weakly on the cobblestones. Arugal could sense that the grievous injuries inflicted upon the Forsaken by his Worgen had taken their toll. Even a Risen such as he, constitution bolstered significantly by Necromantic power, had a breaking point.

"Answer me! What are her plans?" Arugal cried, growing more impatient by the second.

He had danced around that breaking point for the last half hour, first applying the Curse of Agony, then using Wracking Pains. When he saw the horrid wounds that Vincent had suffered at the hands of the Worgen reopening, he backed off. When Vincent's shadow-powered healing kicked in again, and the wounds began to seal themselves, Arugal renewed the assault.

Thus far, to no avail.

The look in Vincent's eye, if indeed there was any insight to be gained from the expressions of an creature such as him, was that of steely resolve mixed with a dose of resignation. Arugal knew full well that wounds of the flesh caused little pain to the Forsaken. However, he had to admit that Vincent's resistance to wounds of the soul and spirit, such as those caused by Wracking Pains and the Vise, was impressive. He had endured far more than a mere human could dream of.

"Vincent Holst. Her Ladyship's Deathstalker." Groaning through gritted teeth, that was all the Forsaken had said.

Arugal finally had enough. There were other ways to obtain the information he needed.

He looked up from Vincent's feebly writhing body to where the other Deathstalker was chained to the bailey's inner portcullis. This one, whose name Arugal hadn't bothered to ask, betrayed far more emotion on his face. Trepidation, uncertainty - these were weaknesses that could be exploited. If Odo was not able to answer Arugal's questions, then surely this Forsaken would.

A little drama then, for the prisoner's sake, seemed appropriate.

"You and your pathetic ilk will find no more success in routing my sons and I than those beggarly remnants of the Kirin Tor," he cried. "Your moldering remains will serve as a testament to what happens when one is foolish enough to trespass in my domain!"

Arugal held up a gloved hand, and, with more artistic flair than usual, clenched it slowly. As he did, he dialed up the Torturous Vise until he could squeeze no more. Vincent's body, already on its final reserves of strength, began to thrash about wildly. His back arched so violently that Arugal heard vertebral bones crunch. Involuntary muscle spasms literally bounced him off the ground, and the guttural screams that issued from his spent lungs were neither human nor animal, but something decidedly more primitive.

Arugal wanted to draw it out even more, for the sake of the one who was watching, but his impatience got the better of him. The last glimmering ember of Vincent's borrowed existence sputtered and died. Even as the necromantic runes on his body faded completely, his body continued to spasm.

Another moment, and Vincent was nothing more than a blackened, cadaverous husk.

"Rethligore," Arugal called to one of the Worgen nearby, whom he had appointed to guard the prisoners in Shadowfang Keep. "Return him to his cell. For now."

As the remaining prisoner was hauled bodily off to his cell again, in the company of the Worgen and one of Arugal's voidwalkers, Arugal turned to go. As he did, he realized with a start that he had quite an audience.

Fenris sat on his haunches behind the archmage, curiously observing the proceedings. There were other observers as well, however. At the end of the gangway from the gatehouse, some fifty feet from Arugal, stood a long arc of figures, some hazy and vaporous, and some very much distinct and recognizable. And angry.

The ghosts of Shadowfang Keep.

They kept their distance from Fenris due to the wards of Forbiddance that Arugal had inscribed on his pet, but he could sense their rage, their thirst for revenge. They were growing stronger and bolder by the day. Arugal did not think the weak ones could do more than plague his dreams, but before him, in the forefront, as if they led this insubstantial army, were a dozen whose manifestations were both tangible and threatening.

The Baron and Andrew Springvale were there, of course. Their faces were bereft of expression, but their eyes, even from this distance, bored into him, like spears of anguish aimed at his heart. Fiona of the Kirin Tor stood beside them, and Jenna's sister as well, as bitter in spirit as she was in flesh. Flanking them were a dozen or more soldiers and workers - men and women whose faces were vaguely familiar, but whose names Arugal had never bothered to learn.

Arugal waved his arms. "Begone!" he cried. "You are in vain! I shall not succumb!" He knew his words were fruitless, but saying them bolstered his own courage.

To prove it, and because there was only one easy access to his tower from here, he drew himself up and strode purposefully toward their midst. Fenris padded along beside him, seemingly oblivious to the specters. In truth, Arugal could easily have teleported himself to the upper battlements, and then into this tower, but he dared not leave Fenris behind, even for a few minutes. He started to regret that his pet had no leash.

As he moved forward, the mass of spirits retreated, then split in two, like a drop of water dividing. "Shadowfang is mine!" he cried as he walked between them, firmly resisting the urge to run. "I will not give it up!"

They said nothing.

He reached the stairs leading to the upper battlements at the base of the tower. Quickly, he ascended, Fenris right behind. At the top, he let out a shaky breath, and looked behind him.

The ghosts gathered at the foot of the stairs, with the more vaporous of specters swirling around the bailey as they often did. The shame of running from an enemy such as this caught in his throat and raised his ire. He vowed to himself that he would not sleep until he had prepared the spells necessary to banish them all - or destroy them utterly.

He turned to his tower, but just then something caught his eye, and he looked back. He suddenly held his breath, and the anger fled from him even as he felt his face flushing. He raised a trembling hand. "Jenna...?" he murmured.

She stood between arcade columns at one end of the courtyard, away from the angry crowd. Hands on her ghostly belly, she gazed up implacably at him, condemning and absolving him at the same time. He staggered.

She was the reason he spent so many hours looking over the edge of the tower balcony at the courtyard below. She was the reason he had not finished his preparations for the Spiritwrack spell - the one that would torture the spirits enough to drive them away. She was the one ghost he longed to see, the one he never got to see... until now.

He took a hesitant step toward the stairs. She slowly shook her head, her woeful eyes dropping to gaze on the bottom of the stairs, where the small army of vengeful ghosts remained. Arugal let out his breath.

For a moment, he was tempted to teleport down to the courtyard, to stand next to her. But what would he do then? Even if he could talk to her, what would he say? How could he tell her that it was not his fault, that the blame belonged to the idiot Baron and his scheming Commander? How could he convey how much he missed her? How could he tell her how hard he had worked to derive a spell that would restore her spirit into a new body, that they would be together again?

If he could tell her that, would she embrace him for it? Or abhor him?

He never got the chance. With a final, longing look, she bowed her head, and turned away from him, walking into the maze of arcades and private apartments - the same place she hid on the day she died. Arugal raced along the battlements, trying to keep her in his sights, with Fenris loping alongside him. She was gone.

At last he stopped, as the battlements ran to the base of his tower. He leaned against the crenelations that formed the inner railing, and scanned the courtyard below. Jenna did not reappear; only the hateful ones remained.

If only the fools had left well enough alone...

He remembered teleporting away from the battlements that morning, where Fiona and her naive friends fancied themselves a match for him. He had appeared on the gangway, next to the inner portcullis of the gatehouse. It had been lowered and barred, and a dozen bowmen had lined up on the courtyard side, bows drawn, arrows nocked, ready to rain death upon the trapped Worgen.

Arugal had no choice. The drawbridge was being raised, the last of the Worgen having already entered the gatehouse. Wolves to the slaughter, so to speak.

Arugal teleported inside the gatehouse, appearing among his Worgen. Nandros and his followers howled with fury, sensing the trap that had been sprung. Some of them ran to the portcullis and began to shake it violently, seeking to topple it or tear it apart. Up above, in the vaulted ceiling of the gatehouse, Arugal could sense the archers that were positioned behind the murder holes, their bows drawn and ready.

"Loose!" cried a voice from above.

Arugal reacted instantly, instinctively - a product of years of training as a battle-mage. He did not have time to perform a full incantation, so he called upon one of the mage's oldest tricks: a sealed spell. They were exhausting, time consuming, and very expensive, but the value they offered was undeniable. With a single command word, Arugal released a complex and powerful spell that he had prepared and cast weeks before.

"Torakizzahd!" he shouted, and suddenly a hazy purple glow, like a soap bubble, emanated from his hands, and spread outward nearly instantly. It ran to the walls, the floor, to the edge of the portcullis, and up to the vaulted ceiling. As it expanded, the archer's arrows bounced harmlessly off it. A small handful of the missiles struck their targets before Arugal's shield reached them; none dropped, however. A single arrow, unless it solidly struck a vital spot, did little more to Worgen than anger them.

It was a battle spell, a mana shield of sorts, originally designed to give a large group of soldiers a chance to move under cover, avoiding cascading waves of arrows fired by the enemy. The larger the area covered, the shorter the duration of the shield, usually measured in seconds.

The gatehouse had a sally-port. It was an enormous oaken door, heavily reinforced, barred from the inside. It led into the galley that occupied the space on either side, and above, the gatehouse. Knowing his shield would last only moments, Arugal teleported again, this time just inside the sally-port. There were two dozen soldiers in the galley, but they were up above, looking through the murder holes, not by the door. Arugal quickly undid the bolt and crossbar, and swung the great portal open.

Nandros instantly saw his means of escape, and with a great growl, he charged through the doorway as Arugal hastily stood aside. The other Worgen followed suit, even as the purple bubble shimmered and disappeared.

"Reload and fire!" came the order, but the shield had confounded the archers, and they were not ready. When the arrows came, most of the Worgen had already piled into the galley and out of harm's way. At least for the moment.

That was when the chaos started, when the blood frenzy of the Worgen began to swell, when time slowed for the archmage and he felt like he was moving through air as thick as water.

The Worgen pressed him up against the wooden wall of the galley as they crowded in and rushed past. By the time he could see anything other than a blur of fur and claws, Nandros had already led the others up the wooden stairs on this side of the galley. They raced into the room above the gatehouse, where the archers, unprepared for a vicious foe fighting at close range, were defenseless.

Arugal heard the screams of agony, the wailing of dying, mixed with the savage roars of the Worgen. Above the din, Springvale's voice, ordering a retreat of the remaining soldiers back out onto the battlements. Arugal ran, seemingly in slow motion, up the stairs. When he reached the top, he had to take a breath to steady himself.

In a matter of moments, the Worgen had cut their way through the unprepared soldiers like a chef hacking cuts of meat from a slain animal. The Worgen did not just kill their enemies, they tore them to pieces, reveling in the gore and the violence. A half-dozen soldiers lay dead or dying on the galley floor, most of them hideously dismembered. Blood seeped into the wood even as Arugal took in the scene.

At the far end of the upper galley, a handful of the Worgen were pursuing the retreating soldiers out onto the battlements. One of the Worgen, itself with two arrows protruding from its side and shoulder, sat in a near corner of the galley, holding a man's leg by the ankle, ripping meat and leather from the thigh with its teeth, sounding like a starving hound given a fresh bone. The erstwhile owner of the leg lay a few feet away, arms outstretched, as if trying to crawl to safety. His eyes, even frozen in death, fixed on the spot where the archmage now stood.

Arugal ran to the doorway that led out onto the battlements. The soldiers were in full retreat now, racing along the wall-walk toward the next bastion across the keep from the gatehouse. A trail of bodies along the battlements testified that the half-dozen Worgen in pursuit ran much faster.

For an instant, Arugal wondered where all the other Worgen had gone. Then, his eyes widened in horror. In the soldiers' haste, they had left open the door that accessed the inner bailey from the galley above the gatehouse. Even as Arugal jumped over to the door and stepped through, he began to hear the screams that came from the courtyard of the keep itself.

The Worgen had been released within.

The archers who had been positioned at the portcullis died first, although most turned to run rather than stand to face the two dozen rampaging creatures. Arugal stood at the top of the stairs into the bailey and watched the scene, his mind detached and numb, half with fascination, and half with horror. There was no spell he could cast, no word of command, that would rein in the savagery of the Worgen now. Arugal knew that their blood frenzy would have to run its course.

In his life, Arugal had battled orcs and humans, Scourge and worse. Nothing had prepared him for this. His gaze landed on Nandros in the courtyard below, and he marveled at how swiftly and adroitly the huge beast moved, how efficient his motions were. Two soldiers attempted to corner him, waving spears in his face even as they saw their own death in his eyes. With a backhand motion of his left hand, he tore the spear out of the first one's grip, then brought his clawed right hand down on the soldier's shoulder, slicing through pauldrons, chainmail, muscle and bone, leaving a corpse hewn wide open. As the other soldier retreated, Nandros picked up the corpse he had just made and launched it at him, knocking him backwards with the force of a falling tree. The man never regained his feet.

Arugal found himself smiling, awestruck. _My children_, he thought, reveling in visions of his future with an army of Worgen at his command. _My sons!_

A cacophony of screams, cries for help, and agonized wails filled the air as the Worgen pursued their prey to all corners of the bailey and beyond, into the Artisan's Warren, the apartments, the barracks and bastions. No one, and no place, was safe from them.

This last thought sent a jolt though Arugal's mind. Jenna! In the chaos, he had forgotten her! With a sudden, sharp intake of breath, he sprang into action. He clapped his hands above his head, and teleported himself to the door outside their apartment. He burst through the door, even as he heard, and felt, the palpable desperation and terror of people in their last moments.

"Jenna!" he cried. "Jenna!" She was not there. He ran from one room to the next, tearing open closet doors, looking behind curtains and under the bed they shared.

Then he heard a sound at the door, and turned to see a young woman - no, a girl, in truth, skin bereft of color, eyes wide in sheer terror, staggering into the room. She held in her arms a crying infant, no more than a couple months old, draped in a wrap that was once white, now soaked with blood. The girl held out the babe with trembling hands to Arugal, as if to give it to him. Then she toppled to the floor, bleeding profusely from deep claw wounds in her back. The infant rolled forward, crying robustly, even as her blood began to pool around it.

Arugal gazed dispassionately on them for a moment. They must have been mensch from the village at the bottom of the hill. He did not recognize either.

Stepping over the infant and girl both, he raced back out into the courtyard, and then toward Annika's apartment. It was close by, he reached it in only a few heartbeats. The door, he saw, had been broken open. He stepped inside.

"Jenna!" he started to shout, but the word lodged in his throat. He did not need to call her name.

He would never need to call her name again.

Arugal stumbled back, shaking his head slowly, glazed expression over his face. His legs trembled. Bumping against one of the arcade columns, he gripped it for support. Turning away from the gruesome scene beyond the broken door, he buried his face in his arms.

For many minutes, Arugal leaned meekly against the stone column, eyes closed, as the clamor of killing and dying besieged his ears and his mind. Eventually, he took a deep breath, and reached into himself for calmness. _I am Archmage Arugal!_ his inner voice cried, _I shall not be overcome!_ In his mind, a silence descended upon the courtyard.

There was little movement across the bailey, save for the occasional victim who hadn't the sense to die quickly. One man crawled slowly across the cobblestones, not fifteen paces from where the archmage stood, leaving a smear of blood and gore in a long, slow trail behind him. Arugal frowned at him, trying to place the face. Was it the Baron's nephew, who came a week ago, seeking safety in the keep? Whoever he was, he reached out with his right arm in Arugal's direction. The object of his effort wasn't the archmage's aid, but rather the man's own left arm, which had been hacked off at the shoulder. The man grasped it at last, and brought it close. He rested his head on it, shut his eyes, and did not open them again.

In the direction of the Great Hall, Arugal saw that the Baron and Springvale had been cornered at last by several of his Worgen. The Commander chose that spot to finish his life, standing his ground even as Silverlaine fled into the hall. He acquitted himself rather well Arugal thought, bloodied sword flashing in the morning light, his paladin's shield blocking one blow after another. In the end, however, he fell under a whirlwind of claw and fang, and his liege joined him not long after.

_Shadowfang_, Arugal thought, recalling the name of an ancient fortress that had long since passed into legend. _Shadowfang Keep. It is mine now_.

His attention was drawn to the battlements high above. Fiona Thelendar, mage-staff in hand, stood surrounded by three Worgen. Arugal grudgingly gave her credit, she could easily have teleported away and saved herself. Against three Worgen, however, she stood little chance. She blinked herself to the other side of the advancing Worgen, and then slammed her staff into the wall-walk, unleashing a momentary blast wave that knocked down all three.

Taking advantage of the disorientation she caused, she dashed away from them. That was when she should have teleported to safety. Arugal would have called that prudence, not cowardice. Yet she kept at it. The blast wave did little to injure the Worgen; it only made them angrier, if such a thing were even possible. They bellowed with rage and charged at her.

A swirling ball of fire formed in her hands, and she unleashed it at the three creatures. Two were again knocked back by the fireball's concussive force, fur singed, eyes stinging. The lead beast, however, was enveloped in magical flame, and he staggered and fell from the wall-walk, plunging thirty feet down onto the cobblestones of the courtyard – a writhing mass of broken bones, scorched fur, and melted flesh.

"They're mine," Arugal murmured. He held up both hands, and, instead of calling upon his arcane powers, he summoned a bolt of pure shadow, and shot it across the keep at her.

She was in the midst of another spell, which might well have injured or even killed another of Arugal's creatures, but the bolt struck her in the side completely unprepared. The shadow magic blackened the purple robes she wore and sank into her flesh, like dozens of tiny, poisonous leeches. The shadowbolt alone did her little true injury, but the interruption of her spell was fatal. The two remaining Worgen closed the distance and lunged at her, even as she struggled to her feet.

As their teeth and claws ripped and tore, and purple robes bled to crimson, Arugal nodded, satisfied.

_They're mine_, he thought again, _My children_.


	10. Chapter 8

_Chapter Eight_

**Toby and Jake**

We crashed through the underbrush after the fleeing man.

He moved well through the woods, legs pumping hard with desperation and adrenaline. I wanted to ask a vine or bush to jump out and trip him up, but the man was so far ahead, I could neither concentrate well enough while running, nor focus on the plant I wanted to speak to. Not to mention I still had no idea how I was doing it in the first place.

Behind us, I could hear muffled shouts and Moonborn's voice calling, but they faded rapidly in the distance.

I caught up with Katrina quickly. Her robes weren't made for cross-country sprints, and every tree branch and fern seemed to snag on her clothing or catch on her boots. "Tangle him up!" she cried at me as she ran.

"I cant!"

We suddenly found ourselves on a narrow foot-trail through the woods, with our quarry just ahead. Katrina stopped, preparing to cast a spell now that he was clearly in her sights. Unfortunately, I was right behind her, and as I came out onto the path, I barreled right into her.

She growled at me, but then refocused. Before she could get the spell off, however, he dashed to the side, off the path, disappearing into the trees.

"Damn it, Sorin!"

She started to run down the trail after him again, but I grabbed her sleeve. "We have to stop him before he can bring others!" she said.

I pointed to a small, rotting tree stump that abutted the path several feet in the opposite direction. "Follow me," I said.

"Sorin, he went that way!"

"I know where he's going," I said. I stepped into the underbrush on the other side of the stump.

"I thought you didn't remember any of this!" she protested, reluctantly following. "You'd better be right. Master Zargath will fry us both if he gets away."

We moved quickly through the woods to a small, tree-lined ravine that ran parallel to the path. I jogged down the slope, Katrina behind me, and ran along the bottom, which was dotted with puddles of sickly green water. Fifty feet later, we came to a cairn of rocks on the opposite side that marked a tiny, overgrown path, winding up the steep slope.

The slope of the ravine continued up, and then over, a low-slung hillside, covered in dense foliage and mats of rotting leaves. I proceeded instinctively, ducking around thick brambles, pushing through thickets, and scrambling over mossy rocks and logs. Behind me, Katrina labored to keep up.

I had no idea where I was going, I just knew how to get there.

We arrived at an immense fallen tree, as wide as I was tall, blocking our advance. It had been there for years. Katrina looked one way and then the other for the shortest route around it, but I knelt and started madly scraping away leaves and rotting vegetation.

"What the hell are you-" Katrina started to say, but her words fell short when my efforts revealed a sizable empty space underneath where the tree had fallen. I ducked down underneath, crawled to the other side, and began to pull away the foliage there.

"My robe is ruined already anyway," Katrina mumbled, and then joined me underneath.

In moments, the leaves were cleared away, and we were rewarded by a unobstructed view of our destination. In the middle of a large clearing down-slope from us stood an old cabin. Its architecture, decidedly foreign to this part of the world, did not consist of long boards or logs connected at right angles. Instead, its walls were made of sheets of a thick, earthen-toned material like dried mud. They were erected along fluid lines from one sturdy tree to the next, forming a wavy oval. The centerpiece of the structure had a second story, wrapped around four of the largest trees, and the top of the structure was domed, except for where the trees poked through.

Although we couldn't see it from our vantage, there was a beautiful garden out back. It was Callie's favorite place to play.

Katrina put a dirty hand to her forehead, fixing me with a disgusted glare. "Well done, tracker," she said sarcastically. "We lost the human, but look what we found instead-"

I put a finger to my lips and pointed.

The young man we were chasing, as if on queue, suddenly stepped from a line of trees into the clearing. He crouched down, carefully scanning the area, and then jogged across the overgrown lawn to the front door of the house, and then stepped inside.

Katrina grinned. "I take that back," she said hastily, then scrambled out from under the log. She got to her feet and started to jog down the tree-dotted slope toward the clearing.

"Katrina, wait!" I hissed, then followed her.

She was headed to the front door when I caught up with her. Grabbing her arm, I led her around the side to the back of the house, sneaking behind the trees that formed part of the walls. At the back of the house sprawled what once was an impressive garden. I paused as we came upon it, scattered memories coming to me of the many hours I had spent out there. The garden, like the clearing out front, and indeed the rest of the Tirisfal Glades, was overrun with brambles, moss, and a sickly green taint. Nevertheless, the arbor, trellises, elven pagodas, and even the stone fountain I had worked so hard on still stood, albeit a bit worse for neglect.

Silently, we crept onto the covered porch, and then in through the back door. The kitchen showed signs of recent activity. Dirty wooden dishes still covered the table, and the wash basin was wet. As we padded silently into the living room, I leaned my spear against the wall, pulling my dagger from its sheath. Coming around the corner, tense with anticipation, we encountered one of the home's occupants.

It was a dog.

The dog was of medium size and build. I knew at once that he was one of those dogs that had almost no significant breeding – a mystery mutt. Part Lordaeron Hound, part Aerie, part Wetlands Retriever, and part who-knows-what. I also knew at once that he was loving, faithful, and played a great game of chase-the-stick.

"Jake...?"

Katrina rolled her eyes. "By the lady," she grumbled, relaxing, "He's still alive? Where is that human?"

I stepped forward and knelt, holding out my empty hand, and smiled broadly. "Jake! By the Light it is good to see you, boy! How did you manage to-"

Jake took a couple hesitant steps forward, then suddenly backed up, bearing his teeth and letting out a low, guttural growl.

I slid forward a step or two. "Jake, it's me! It's Sorin!" I urged. He looked confused, frightened, backing away toward the front door, ready to either bite my hand off or run for it.

"Shhh," Katrina said, "The human will hear."

I didn't know at the time that all dogs abhor the undead; indeed, they are frequently trained to hunt us down. Instead, I assumed his confusion was because I spoke in orcish. I struggled a moment to form a phrase in Common.

That's when the other inhabitant of the house appeared, in the front doorway. He was the one we'd been chasing. No more than eighteen, he had sandy hair, freckles, and the scruff of a young man's beard. He held a powerful-looking heavy crossbow, bolt loaded, aimed right at my heart. His hands shook.

Katrina laughed. It wasn't kind. "Arn bolit, two Forsaken," she said in Common. I didn't quite follow all her words; it was like she was speaking too fast, though I knew she wasn't. Whatever she said did make an impression on him, however. He gulped, sweat beading on his brow, and his aim went from me to her, back to me again.

"Katrina," I said in a low, even voice, still down on one knee. "That's Toby. One of Will Saldean's boys. We can't hurt him." I remembered Toby now, at least bits and pieces. He lived on a large farm belonging to one of Brill's more prominent citizens. He was the youngest of six sons, more of a dreamer than a farmer, in truth. He often tested his father's patience to breaking, and on those days he would take refuge at our house, entertaining Callie, playing with Jake, and eating our food. We never minded.

Katrina fixed him with an icy glare. "Doesn't matter," she said. "Will Saldean is one of us now."

I didn't move. "Toby," I said in what I hoped was Common, "It's Sorin. Sorin Trollbane."

Jake now had his haunches backed up into Toby's leg. He held his head low, tail curled under, alternately growling and whining.

"Toby!" I repeated.

He swallowed again, eyes darting back and forth. I saw a glimmer of recognition in his face, mixed with confusion. "Sorin...?" he whispered.

I nodded slowly. "Run," I urged.

"Oh, this is ridiculous," Katrina suddenly cried. She raised both hands, and her eyes and face darkened again, as they had during the fight on the road. Then both hands burst into flame.

Toby jerked the crossbow up and fired it. The bolt whistled across the room. His aim was poor; the missile missed the neck of Katrina's robe by six inches, instead punching a hole in the far wall. Katrina did not flinch.

I jumped to my feet and lunged at Toby, trying to shield him with my body. Jake growled viciously. Toby, wide eyes fixed on Katrina's hands, was unable to protect himself from my sudden move. He fumbled the crossbow as I plowed into him, and the two of us went tumbling out the front door, with Jake dancing around us, snarling and barking.

I wound up on top. As I lifted myself off him, I saw a crimson glow all around my hands and arms. I threw myself to the side to get clear of him, screaming "Run, Toby! Run!"

What happened next is hard to describe. I saw Toby scrambling backwards, but in that same instant, I heard a roar like the ocean in my ears, and then I was engulfed in a white-hot searing pain such as my new body had never experienced. Tongues of yellow flame obscured my vision, while the oily black stench of burning flesh filled my nostrils. I struggled to reach my hands and knees, only to collapse again.

I distinctly recall, despite the overwhelming torment, having a bizarre stray thought. I hoped I was not too close to the house; the stucco-and-resin coating I had used to cover all the walls was fantastic for insulation against the cold and the rain, but I used to worry that the resin might be flammable.

As I thrashed around, growing weaker and weaker, I heard vague voices beyond the roaring of the fire. At first, it was only Katrina. She kept crying the same thing over and over. "It's okay," I said to her, although I think I only did so in my mind, "Not your fault. I got in the way."

The roar died away, but the pain did not diminish. Katrina's distraught face appeared in my vision against a backdrop of blurry clouds and wisps of black smoke. She said something again. I couldn't really understand. I wanted to roll on my side, and look for Toby and Jake – were they okay? My muscles only trembled.

Then Moonborn was there. I didn't feel her hands on my arm, but I could hear her whispering softly in what must have been Taurhe. The pain and the palpable sense of weakness suddenly began to withdraw as if they were being siphoned away.

"Oh, Sorin, I'm so sorry. Please! Are you all right?" Katrina's voice. I blinked; my eyes started to focus. Strength returned, slowly.

"We lost you in the woods," said Moonborn. "You both ran off so quickly!"

I tried to get to my feet, a little too soon. I wobbled.

Moonborn sat me back down. "Not so fast," she said, "you were badly burned. Those runes of yours were pretty dim."

"Where are Jake and Toby?" I asked. My voice worked surprisingly well, considering the taste and smell of the oily black smoke were still embedded in my mouth, nose, and throat, and would remain so for weeks.

Katrina fixed me with an inscrutable look. "Gone," she said. "They fled into the woods."

She pointed to the far treeline. Snakestomper was there, jogging back toward us, shield and hammer still in hand. He spoke in Taurhe.

"Orcish, beloved brother," Moonborn replied. "The others want to know, too."

The big Tauren glared at Katrina and I, snorting and mumbling to himself, but offered no translation.

"He says that the human got away. We should not linger here."

I stood with Katrina's help. She gazed up at me anxiously. "Can you walk?" she asked.

I nodded. Surprisingly, I felt fine. My skin was its normal color; that is, an unhealthy, pasty white. The rune on my chest glowed as steadily as ever. Of course, what was left of my tattered clothing had been badly burnt. My jacket, torn and threadbare to begin with, was gone completely. My trousers suffered a similar fate. I stood only in blackened boots and small-clothes.

Katrina did not seem to notice the impropriety, but Moonborn raised an eyebrow at me.

I turned to go back into the house (which I was glad to see had not been affected by my little blaze). "Sorin, we need to meet back up with Benu and Master Zargath," said Katrina. "We can't stay here."

"I'll be just a moment," I mumbled, mostly ignoring her.

I went back inside, intending to get some clothes. This was my home, after all, even if someone else had been living in it. I stood in the middle of the living room. Now that we weren't chasing anyone, I could take it all in. Everything was a memory, from the tiny ripples in the resin that covered the inside of the walls, to the wood floor, the furniture. This place was where my old life, my life from _before_, lived on, even if it wasn't mine any more.

"We should burn it," Katrina said. She had come in, standing behind me.

"Excuse me?"

"It's obviously home to the Scarlets, or at least the resistance. Grab whatever it is you want to grab, and we'll burn it before we leave."

"This is my home, Katrina," I insisted. "We're not burning it."

"It's not your home anymore," she countered. "Look." She pointed at the dirty dishes still on the table. "The humans live here now."

"Toby lives here now," I argued, "and he's welcome to."

"Toby is part of the human resistance," Katrina said, getting angry. "Toby is the enemy. And that was a really stupid thing you did. What were you thinking? I am very sorry you got hurt, but, really, Sorin. Immolation is a powerful spell, and once it ignites I can't stop it; it has to burn itself out. Your runes were nearly fried."

"Maybe I wanted them to be fried," I said softly.

"So that's it then?" she retorted, rolling her eyes in disgust. "I didn't think you were the sort who would waste time feeling sorry for yourself. Guess I'm wasting _my_ time on _you_. We'll just leave you here for the Scarlets. Do you know what they like to do to us?"

I raised my eyebrow. I didn't even know who these Scarlets were, let alone what they liked to do.

"They used to just torture us until we died, which can take days, even weeks. But their new High Inquisitor has taken to hacking us apart and then letting us go. We've had Risen brought home with no arms or legs, but very much alive. Even Lady Sylvanas hasn't figured out how to fix them yet."

I didn't respond. I was running my finger along the edge of a painting that hung over the table. It was a coastal scene, with a windswept bluff ablaze with wildflowers overlooking the water. It was Mortenay Cove, just a few miles to the north. We used to camp there overnight during the summer.

Katrina let out a long breath, trying to release her frustration. She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Sorin, please. I know this is hard. Lots of Risen struggle to let go. Lady Sylvanas can help you. But we need to leave. That patrol we ran into were just resistance rabble. If we get caught by a party of Scarlets, we'll be in real trouble. Please."

I finally nodded. "No burning the house," I said.

"No burning," she agreed.

I moved quickly into the bedroom. Despite the evidence that someone else lived here now, much of the room had been preserved in it's previous state, as if the inhabitant was just a short-term guest. I rummaged through my closet until I found suitable clothing, picking out the least moth-eaten. I exchanged my charred footwear for a sturdy pair of boots.

As I left the bedroom, an object on one of the shelves caught my eye. I swept it up as I left. Katrina greeted me in the doorway, with my spear in hand. "Time to go," she said.

We took the short-cut back. There was no sign of any pursuit. As we went, I turned the object I had taken from the bedroom over and over in my hands. It was a small carving of a wolf, done by Annika. She had wanted me to teach her to sculpt wood, and the wolf was the first piece she did.

I remembered the look on her face when she gave it to me. She knew it was terrible, she had to explain what it was. Painting was her art; she had done all the pictures that hung on our walls. Yet this barely-recognizable piece of wood brought as much pride and joy to her face as her finest paintings. I treasured it.

She was excited to start on her second piece, but I never got to see it, because that was when I had sent them both to live with my father in Dalaran.

Just to be safe.


	11. Chapter 9

_Chapter Nine_

**Mixed Allegiances**

"Your friend is quite attached to his former kin," Zargath commented to Katrina.

"Yes, master," she murmured in response. Sorin and the others were gathering together gear from Mrs. Winters' carts, while she and Zargath watched from a short distance. "It happens a lot to new Risen. He's just a little mixed up, that's all. He'll come around in time."

"We don't have time for him to come around," Zargath countered. Katrina cringed slightly, knowing the venomous anger hidden behind his thin veil of civility.

"Please, master, I'll take him to see Her Dark Ladyship," Katrina replied tremulously. "She'll set him straight."

"This mission is far too important to be jeopardized because he can't recall whose side he's on." Zargath turned to her, glaring at her with his beady eyes. "Both for your Dark Lady, and for _us_. Don't forget whose side _you're_ on, either."

Katrina bowed her head. "Of course, master."

"Take him to see the Dark Lady. Then meet us before daybreak at Lordaering Cove."

"Yes, master."

"And, Katrina – he stays in the Undercity."

Katrina nodded gravely. "Yes, master."


End file.
